Ukraine is a space power. This status is due to Ukrainian-born and educated scientists and designers like Mykola Kybalchych, Yurii Kondratiuk, and Sergei Korolev. April 12 marks the 50th anniversary of the world’s first manned space mission.
Few know even now that several Soviet Ukrainian enterprises were part of the preparations for Yurii Gagarin’s journey to orbit. Kyiv’s Arsenal Plant made the spacecraft’s homing system and Kyivprylad provided the instruments used to monitor oil content in liquid oxygen for the rocket engines. The spacecraft’s light conductors were made at Pozhmash in Pryluky. In other words, Ukrainian scientists, designers, engineers, and workers assisted the humankind’s first journey into outer space.
The Soviet space project “Vostok” envisaged launches in 1959-61 of spacecraft with mice, dogs, and a life-size human dummy on board (tagged as Ivan Ivanovich by some wisecrackers at Korolev’s OKB-1 design bureau), before the first manned flight. All these spacecraft were guided by Ukrainian instruments.
Below are the recollections of several persons directly involved in the space project. Today these are middle-aged people who live in Kyiv.
Continued on page SCIENCE







