Lost Forever| 5 People Who Were Last of Their Kind

The shocking collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 rippled across the globe, but for Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov, the implications reached even further.Show more

At the moment that the Soviet Union ceased to exist, Krikalyov was aboard the Mir space station.

With the very country that launched him vanishing beneath his feet and the Baikonur Cosmodrome landing site now in the newly independent nation of Kazakhstan, he was marooned among the stars.

As the Soviet Union dissolved and his comrades below became citizens of independent nations, Krikalyov remained an official Soviet.

He continued to fulfill his tasks, which included six spacewalks and various repairs and upgrades to the machinery aboard the Mir.

The cosmonaut who would have been sent to relieve Krikalyov of his duties was taken off the mission and replaced with a Kazakh cosmonaut - a thinly veiled attempt by Moscow's leaders to smooth over frictions with Kazakhstan.

Life aboard the Mir was not easy, with constant fans and machinery making enough noise to cause hearing loss. It was an unsanitary place, famed for its powerful smell of sweat.

Krikalyov, however, always considered it home, spending his time gazing out into the void and learning to fly from one side of the ship to the other without ever touching a surface - a feat that few before him had managed.

Witnessing this historic shift in power from space, Krikalyov saw presidents come and go; he saw his hometown of Leningrad renamed St Petersburg, as well as the fall of communism and the formation of 15 independent nations.

Ultimately, Krikalyov remained in space for twice as long as intended, a total of 311 days. By all accounts, upon arriving back on Earth, Krikalyov was very unwell. He was pallid and thin, sweaty and weak.

As a result of time dilation, when Krikalyov finally returned to Earth, he was 0.02 seconds younger than those born at the same time as him but suffered increased risks of cancer, atrophied muscles, and substantial bone density loss.

Krikalyov, whose story has inspired films and literature and who returned to space just one year after the fall of the Soviet Union, remains an important mechanical engineer to this day. He is still referred to as 'the last Soviet citizen...'