(Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malechenko hit a weird – or futuristic – milestone this day 16 years ago. The Quint is republishing this article from its archives, originally published on 10 August 2017.)
Exactly 16 years ago, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko marked an unusual milestone in the history of space travel as he became the first person to get married in space.
Aboard the International Space Centre on 10 August 2003, a 42-year-old Malenchenko supplemented his formal space suit with a bow-tie on the special occasion, all set to get hitched to his lover, Ekaterina Dmitriev, who was waiting at NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, USA.
Though born in the erstwhile Soviet Union, Dmitriev had migrated to the US at the age of four.
In this video, Dmitriev talks about her wedding with Malenchenko.
The rituals took place via a video link and it turned out to be quite fancy for a space wedding. Malenchenko had his astronaut colleague, Ed Lu, as his best man who played some wedding music on a keyboard!
An ecstatic Dmitriev, who even kept a life-size cut-out of Malenchenko at the reception ceremony, had said:
“Because of our deep true love that we share… we just decided that this was the ultimate cosmic soulful connection.”
The ceremony may have been a well-planned affair, but it wasn’t meant to be held in space in the first place. A delay in Malenchenko's mission resulted in a clash with the wedding date the two had mutually decided on. But rather than defer the wedding, they chose to stick to the plan.
What’s more, the marriage also had its share of obstacles, with the Russian officials raising objections to a military official getting married to a foreigner, while on a space mission. The authorities eventually relented, but at the same time said that rules would be enforced to avoid any such marriage in the future.
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