In 1984, Soviet cosmonaut Oleg Atkov flew a portable ultrasound to Salyut 7 and became the first doctor to image a human heart shrinking in real time in orbit

In 1984, Soviet cosmonaut Oleg Atkov flew a portable ultrasound to Salyut 7 and became the first doctor to image a human heart shrinking in real time in orbit

In 1984, a Soviet physician named Oleg Atkov floated inside the cramped forward compartment of Salyut 7 and pressed an ultrasound transducer against his own chest. What appeared on the small screen in front of him was, by most accounts, the first time a human heart had been imaged in real time in orbit — and the first time a doctor watched, live, as that heart began to change shape without gravity pulling on it. Atkov spent 237 days aboard Salyu…