Russia's 2nd cosmonaut, Gierman Titov, dies in sauna

Gierman Titov

MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Cosmonaut Gierman Titov, Russia's second man in space and the first person to spend more than a day in orbit, has been found dead in his home sauna, police said on Thursday. He was 65.

A police spokesman said the early suggestion was Titov probably died of carbon monoxide poisoning late on Wednesday.

Gennady Seleznyov, speaker of parliament's lower house where Titov was a Communist deputy, said the ex-cosmonaut may have suffered a heart attack.

On August 6 and 7, 1961, Titov spent 25 hours 18 minutes on board the tiny Soviet Vostok-2 spacecraft in what was the first full-scale space mission after two mostly symbolic space flights by a Russian and an American.

On April 12 that year, Yuri Gagarin made the first flight on Vostok-1, which lasted less than two hours.

Titov was the backup cosmonaut for that flight, and Western reports have suggested he only narrowly missed being chosen to go up first instead of Gagarin.

Gagarin's mission was followed by a 15-minute sub-orbital flight by U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard.

Space experts have said that after Titov's flight doctors had to examine causes of space sickness he had suffered during the mission and work out ways to reduce it, postponing the launch of the next Vostok by nearly a year.

Long a source of prestige, Russia's space program is now struggling due to a chronic lack of cash.

As with most members of the initial space team, Titov became a prominent member of Soviet elite and a public figure.

In the 1980s he spent years working on the Buran program to create a Russian space shuttle but it was eventually scrapped after making one unmanned flight.

In the post-Soviet years, Titov threw himself into politics and represented the Communist Party in the defense committee of the State Duma lower house.

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