Valentin Vitalyevich Lebedev (Russian: Валентин Витальевич Лебедев; born April 14, 1942, in Moscow) is a former Soviet cosmonaut who made two flights into space.

In 1975 Lebedev defended his Ph.D. thesis on “Methods of formation of the dynamic test bench for the base service of spaceship and crew training”.

After his graduation from the Moscow Aviation Institute, Lebedev worked for 23 years at the Central Design Bureau "Energy" (SPU "Energy") of the Soviet Scientific Production Union[2] as an engineer, senior research fellow, and a methodology instructor in the cosmonaut's detachment.

In 1967 Lebedev participated in an expedition of the Eighth Naval Squadron to locate, rescue, and rehabilitate the spaceship Zond after its landing in the Indian Ocean.

His first space flight was with Peter Klimuk, as a crew engineer aboard Soyuz 13, which orbited Earth from 18–26 December 1973.

After this space flight, Lebedev was awarded a gold medal, "Hero of Soviet Union", the Order of Lenin, and promoted to the rank of Pilot Cosmonaut.

After that space flight, Lebedev was awarded a second gold medal, "Hero of Soviet Union", and a second Order of Lenin.

Under V. Lebedev's scientific leadership a unified technology was developed for the creation of maps showing the dynamics of ecosystems.

These maps were instrumental in the creation of the Ecological Geoinformaion System of the Moscow Automobile Ring Road (Russian: GIS EcoMKAD), which monitored changes in land, surface water, ground water, and flora, due to pollution created by traffic on Moscow's Ring Road.

[3] Together with the Hydrometerological Center of Russia and IWP, as part of a federal program on Reviving the Volga River, the RAS created a new technology for predicting spring floods, based on analysis of runoff from snow blankets, the moisture content of soil (frozen during winter months), and the current state of the landscape.