The second Pole will fly into space, but many have contributed to space exploration

Everyone knows the legendary Pan Twardowski, a sixteenth-century nobleman called the "Polish Faust", who flew to the Moon - some say that he was carried there by a rooster, others - by the devil, to whom Twardowski promised his soul for learning the knowledge and secrets of magic. According to the Germans, he was a German educated in Wittenberg, Laurentius Dhur, from the Latin Durentius, which means "tward", hence his Polonized surname.

The only Polish cosmonaut born in Poland was Brigadier General Mirosław Hermaszewski, a military pilot. He was born on September 15, 1941, in Lipniki, Volhynia. As a child, he was saved by his mother from the UPA raid on Lipniki in March 1943. During the Volhynian massacre, he lost 19 members of his family, including his father. In 1945, the Hermaszewskis were displaced from the Eastern Borderlands to Lower Silesia. They settled in Wołów, near Wrocław.

From 1960 he was active in the Wrocław Aeroclub. He joined the Air Force Academy in Dęblin, from which he graduated in 1964 with the rank of second lieutenant. In 1962 he joined the Polish United Workers' Party. He graduated with distinction from the General Staff Academy in Warsaw, and served in the National Air Defense Forces - from 1976 with the rank of major. As commander of the 11th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Lower Silesian Settlers' Air Force in Wrocław, he was included in a group of 300 candidates for cosmonauts as part of the international Intercosmos Program established by the USSR. The reserve candidate for the flight was Zenon Jankowski (Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski has no deputy).

The authorities of the Polish People's Republic insisted that Poland - the main trading partner of the USSR and an ally during World War II in the fight against the Third Reich - should have priority in space flights. Moscow decided that the first to fly into space would be representatives of Czechoslovakia and Poland - probably because the social situation in both countries was unfavourable for the authorities. In Czechoslovakia, the dissident movement Charter 77 was active, in Poland the society was dissatisfied with the price increases. The authorities, although undemocratic, needed an event that would distract public opinion, something like an election sausage. Incidentally, after the first flight of a Polish cosmonaut, a joke about the "Hermaszewska sausage" appeared: "There is a vacuum inside, and if you try, your eyes will pop out of their sockets".

On December 4, 1976, Hermaszewski and Jankowski flew to the Star City near Moscow, where they spent a year and a half preparing for space flight.

On March 2, 1978, the Czech Vladimir Remek flew into space. On June 27, it was Mirosław Hermaszewski's and Piotr Klimuk's turn (Belarussian SSR) to take off on board the Soyuz 30 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. For most Poles, the news came as a complete surprise – the broadcast of a program for farmers was interrupted and the national emblem appeared on TV screens. Some thought that a war had begun...

After two days, Soyuz connected with the Salyut 6 orbital station, where two other Soviet cosmonauts were waiting - Vladimir Kovalonok and Aleksandr Ivanchenkov. After completing the research program, they landed on the steppe of Kazakhstan on July 5. During the 8-day mission, 126 orbits of the Earth were made and several Polish records approved by the FAI were set; including: altitude - 363 km, flight speed - 28 thousand km/h, flight duration - 190 hours 3 minutes 4 seconds, distance covered - 5,273,257 km. In an interview for "Rzeczpospolita" in 2018, the Polish cosmonaut said that the sunrises visible with each subsequent orbit were not only an aesthetic but also a spiritual experience for him. He could also see Poland from above.

According to an ancient Russian custom, a warm kiss on the lips as a sign of friendship is a sign of respect - that is why Brezhnev kissed Honecker and Carter. The televised scene of a kiss in zero gravity, exchanged by Mirosław Hermaszewski and Aleksandr Ivanchenkov, inspired Maciej Zembaty to write "Ballad of Major Hermaszewski", performed at the True Song Festival in Gdynia (21 August 1981).

For his participation in the mission, Mirosław Hermaszewski was awarded the Golden Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Cross of Grunwald, 1st Class. The list of later decorations is long (for example, the Order of the Smile). On July 22, 1978, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In Poland, postage stamps and a coin (20 PLN) with his image were issued.

During martial law (1981–1983), Hermaszewski was a formal member of the Military Council of National Salvation. At that time, he was studying at the Military Academy of the General Staff in Moscow. He claimed that he had been included in the WRON without his knowledge.

In the years 1987–1990 he was the commandant of the Higher Officers' Aviation School in Dęblin. From December 1989 to June 1990 - deputy head of the Main Educational Board of the Polish Army. 1991–1992 he served as deputy commander of the Air Force and Air Defense. 1992–1995 - head of flight safety. From 1995 he was the inspector for Air Forces at the General Staff of the Polish Army. After 40 years of service he retired.

On October 5, 2005, he made his farewell flight on board a MiG-29UB fighter. In total, he spent 2,047 hours and 47 minutes in the air, performed 3,473 takeoffs and landings - as well as 10 training parachute jumps. In 2003, Mirosław Hermaszewski was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

In 2018, Mateusz Morawiecki's government prepared a law to demote people who betrayed the Polish raison d'état in the years 1943-1990, including all members of the WRON. The law, already voted on by the parliament, was vetoed by President Andrzej Duda, citing the example of General Hermaszewski as a person who should not be stripped of his military rank under the law.

He died on December 12, 2022, at the age of 81, as a result of complications following surgery. He was buried at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw. The ceremony was of a state nature with the participation of the Polish Army's representative company. Four F-16 fighters flew over the necropolis in tribute to the deceased. Wreaths were sent by, among others, the Russian Embassy and Piotr Klimuk.

Before Mirosław Hermaszewski, other Polish people contributed to space exploration. Nicolaus Copernicus, born in 1473, created a heliocentric model of the Solar System and made one of the greatest breakthroughs in science, called the Copernican Revolution. According to it, the Earth ceased to be the center of the Universe and became one of many planets. Copernicus presented his vision in his work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). There are still disputes as to whether the author of the work was more Polish or German; he certainly operated in Poland and was a subject of the Polish king.

Kazimierz Siemienowicz, a 17th-century military engineer and artillery theoretician born in Samogitia, was the author of the book "Artis Magnae Artilleriae pars prima" (The Great Art of Artillery, Part One), which was the basic artillery manual in Europe for almost 200 years. In this manual, he discussed, among other things, the technology of manufacturing combat rockets, including multi-stage rockets, and the construction of the delta wing, used as a rocket stabilizer - instead of the long pole used previously. All currently used rockets capable of leaving the Earth's gravitational field are multi-stage rockets - individual stages are discarded when their fuel is used up. Poland, Lithuania and Belarus all consider Siemienowicz to be their pride.

One of the greatest visionaries in terms of space flight, a pioneer of cosmonautics, creator of the model of the theory of motion and construction of a space rocket, Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) was primarily associated with Russia and considered himself a Russian, but his father, Edward Tsiolkovsky, was a Polish official, and his mother, Maria Yumasheva - a Russian of Tatar origin. As Tsiolkovsky himself said, "he combined Russian, Polish, Tatar and, it seems, Ukrainian blood in himself".

His achievements include the theory of the motion of multistage rockets in the Earth's gravitational field, the theoretical foundations of the construction of liquid-fuel rocket engines, and the proposal to use gyroscopic stabilizers in rockets. Tsiolkovsky believed that through the colonization of space, people would become perfect and immortal.

Born in 1905 in Sieradz to a Jewish family, Ary Sternfeld was already interested in space flights during his studies, which was not met with enthusiasm in Poland. In France, his ideas were more popular, but they had no practical possibilities of implementation. The term "cosmonautics" appeared for the first time in Sternfeld's book "Initiation à la Cosmonautique" (Introduction to Cosmonautics), which won the International Astronautical Prize. He dealt with the issues of aerodynamics of rocket flight, the problem of weightlessness and the construction of spaceships, as well as possible trajectories of satellites. In 1935, he moved to the Soviet Union, where he eventually joined the work on the space program there. The first Sputnik orbited in the orbit he proposed. Ary Sternfeld died in Moscow in 1980.

Prof. Mieczysław Bekker, director of the General Motors Research Institute in Santa Barbara in the early 1960s, and his team won the NASA competition for a vehicle capable of moving on the Moon as part of the Apollo space program. Professor Bekker was the author of all the technical solutions for the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), which ensured movement on the surface of the Moon - the most famous of which were the piano wire "tires". The electrically powered vehicle was made by General Motors in cooperation with Boeing, and three of its copies landed on the Moon as part of the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions. He died in 1989 in Santa Barbara.

Another Pole working for the Apollo program was engineer Eugeniusz Lachocki, born in 1921 in Pruzhany in Polesie (now Belarus). During the war, he was deported to Kazakhstan, joined Anders's army and took part in the Battle of Monte Cassino. Later, he took up electronics - he gained recognition working for American companies. Thanks to this, he was entrusted with ambitious tasks - for NASA's needs, he developed efficient and reliable power sources for radio communication and television devices installed in the lunar lander, based on hydrogen fuel cells and silver-zinc cells, power supply for the Bekker lunar rover, and later power sources for space shuttles. He died in 2010.

Born in Warsaw in 1921, Wojciech Rostafiński fought in the Warsaw Uprising and was awarded the Virtuti Militari. Although he was taken prisoner by the Germans, he managed to survive the war and, via Belgium, to the USA, where he eventually found his way to NASA in Cleveland. He worked there for 33 years, dealing mainly with pumps for liquid oxygen and hydrogen and axial compressors used in liquid fuel engines. He contributed, among other things, to the creation of the Saturn V lunar rocket, which - unlike the Soviet N1 - flew to the Moon multiple times and did not explode during tests due to design flaws. He died in Cleveland in 2002.

Other Poles also made significant contributions to the Apollo program. Werner Ryszard Kirchner, born in Opole in 1918, who fought in the 317th Vilnius Fighter Squadron during his stay in Great Britain (he was awarded the Cross of Valor three times), became a chemist after the war (he was inspired by the sight of a rocket destroying a German tank). He worked on fuels for larger-caliber rockets (Polaris and Minuteman ballistic missiles). Wernher von Braun himself, whom Kirchner met while studying at MIT, brought him to NASA, where he developed, among other things, fuel for the Eagle lunar lander.

Born in 1923 in Vilnius, Stanisław Stankiewicz (Stanley Stanwyck-Stankiewicz) was a soldier in the 2nd Polish Corps during World War II, after arriving from the USA he joined the United States Marine Corps. As a Marine sergeant he took part in the Korean War, from which he returned as a disabled veteran. This did not prevent him from pursuing a scientific career - he obtained a doctorate in thermodynamics and began working as an aeronautical engineer at NASA. He participated in the Skylab program and work related to the Apollo 11 mission - he developed a special breathing mixture for astronauts, allowing to reduce the pressure in the cabin, but not posing a fire hazard.

Born in 1920 in Bytoń, Kujawy, Kazimierz Piwoński, who served in the 307th Lviv Night Fighter Squadron, came to the USA after the war, where he designed the so-called Rendez Vous Radar, a radar that enabled the Apollo spacecraft to meet the LM lunar vehicle in lunar orbit and return the astronauts to Earth. He died in the USA in 1996.

Prof. Michał Kleiber (later Minister of Science and Computerization 2001-2005) worked at the University of Stuttgart and the University of California at Berkeley in the 1980s. There, he worked on modeling and computer simulation of, among other things, the behavior of spacecraft during flight, including the Columbia space shuttle, while it was still in the design phase.

Born in Warsaw in 1957, Artur Bartłomiej Chmielewski works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California as a space mission manager. He has participated in such international projects as the Rosetta, Galileo, Ulysses and Cassini-Huygens missions.

American astronauts of Polish descent include: James Anthony "Jim" Pawelczyk, who took a Polish flag on his space expedition; Scott Edward Parazynski, who took the Kościuszko Squadron badge with him; George David "Zambo" Zamka (of Colombian-Polish descent); Christopher John Ferguson (of Scottish-Polish descent) and the late Karol Joseph "Bo" Bobko.

Paweł Wernicki (PAP)

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