New Delhi, Mar 1: Acclaimed Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the NXT event held at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on Saturday, presenting the Indian PM with the flags of the two countries that had been onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

During the brief interaction, Artemyev also presented PM Modi a book 'On the Moon' written by noted Russian theoretical space scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.

"In turn, PM Narendra Modi highly praised the level of international cooperation in space exploration, and specifically noted the bilateral collaboration between Russia and India on space projects, including our country's contribution to the national manned space mission Gaganyaan," stated the Russian Embassy in India.

Born on December 28, 1970 in Riga (now the Republic of Latvia) in the family of a military engineer, Artemyev spent his childhood in the city of Leninsk in Kazakhstan where his father served.

From 1998, he was a test engineer at the S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation (RKK) Energia in the city of Korolev, near Moscow and took part in the preparations for the July 2000 launch of the Zvezda service module of the ISS.

Artemyev made his first flight into space in March-September 2014 as a flight engineer of the Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft and the 39th/40th main expedition to the ISS together with Alexander Skvortsov and American astronaut Steven Swanson. Together with Skvortsov, he went into outer space twice.

In March-October 2018, he was the commander of the Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft and a flight engineer of the ISS-55/56 expedition.

From March 18 to September 29, 2022, he performed his third space flight as the commander of the Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft and the ISS-67 expedition.

According to Russian news agency Tass, in total, over three flights, Artemyev spent 560 days, 18 hours, seven minutes in space, and performed eight spacewalks.

India-Russia collaboration in the space sector dates back to the launching of Aryabhata satellite, sending the first Indian - Rakesh Sharma - into space on Russia's Soyuz T-11 spacecraft in 1984 and training four Indian astronauts for the prestigious, manned space mission Gaganyaan.

--IANS

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