WELDING IN SPACE

The world’s first welding in space was completed in 1969 by astronauts Valeriy Kubasov and Georgiy Shonin of the Soyuz‑6 spacecraft on the automatic cannon Vulcan, designed at the Paton Electric Welding Institute in Ukraine. Welding in outer space was implemented for the first time with the use of URI plant by astronauts Svetlana Savitskaya and Vladimir Janibekov on board of the Salyut 7 orbital space station. These experiments opened the prospect for constructing complex structures in orbital space.