Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov
Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov was a Soviet engineer, spacecraft designer, and cosmonaut whose single spaceflight was historically unusual because he flew in a vehicle he had helped design. He was not a career military pilot; he came from the engineering side of the Soviet space program.
- Born
- February 7, 1926
- Died
- November 21, 2009
- Birthplace
- Voronezh,Soviet Union
Flights
1
Spacewalks
N/A
EVA time
N/A
In space
1 day, 17 minutes
Bio
Feoktistov survived wartime service as a teenager, later studied at Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School, and joined the design world connected to Sputnik, Vostok, Voskhod, and Soyuz. His engineering career placed him close to Sergei Korolev's human-spaceflight program before he ever trained as a crew member.
Voskhod 1 launched in October 1964 with Vladimir Komarov, Boris Yegorov, and Feoktistov. It was the first crewed spacecraft to carry more than one person and the first to carry a scientist-engineer and a physician into orbit.
His flight lasted just over one day, but his broader importance is much larger. Feoktistov represents the designer-as-crew-member idea: a person who helped create Soviet spacecraft and then briefly became part of the crewed record himself.