Nikolai Tikhonov (cosmonaut)

In this name that follows East Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Vladimirovich and the family name is Tikhonov.

Nikolay Vladimirovich Tikhonov (Russian Cyrillic: Николай Владимирович Тихонов; born May 23, 1982) is a retired Russian cosmonaut, selected in 2006. He was scheduled to make his first space flight in 2020, onboard Soyuz MS-16, but was removed for medical reasons.

Nikolay Tikhonov
Born	(1982-05-23) May 23, 1982 (age 43) Novomoskovsk, Russia SFSR
Status	Retired (Jul 2020)
Nationality	Russian
Space career
RSA Cosmonaut
Time in space	None
Selection	2006 RSA Group

Cosmonaut career

After working as an engineer for RKKE, he was selected for cosmonaut training in 2006.

In 2013, Tikhonov served as cavenaut into the ESA CAVES^[1] training in Sardinia, alongside Soichi Noguchi, Andreas Mogensen, David Saint-Jacques, Andrew Feustel and Michael Fincke.

He was selected as a backup flight engineer for Soyuz MS-02. He was made a prime crew member of Soyuz MS-04 but, due to Russian budget cuts, the crews were changed and Tikhonov was then slated to make his first spaceflight on the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft. He was again removed from the manifest due to delays in launching the Russian Nauka module.^[2][3] He was scheduled to fly into space as commander of the Soyuz MS-15 mission, although he was removed for a third time following the aborted launch of Soyuz MS-10, and the subsequent crew changes that followed. He was scheduled to finally make his first flight onboard Soyuz MS-16 in 2020, but ended up replaced for medical reasons.^[4]

Tikhonov (right) as part of the Soyuz MS-02 backup crew.

In July 2020 it was reported he had left the cosmonaut corps "in connection with new data on his state of health".^[5]