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Canwest News Service
Konstantin Feoktistov, a Soviet engineer who was one of the first civilian astronauts and a prominent spacecraft designer, died on Saturday in Moscow, the Russian space agency said. He was 83.
Feoktistov, for whom a crater was named on the Moon, was also the only Soviet astronaut who was not a member of the Communist Party, the agency said.
In October 1964, he flew on the first space flight that had more than one astronaut and carried civilians. He was crowded with two others, a doctor and a military commander, into a small spacecraft called the Voskhod (Sunrise). Aloft for a day, the spacecraft orbited the Earth numerous times while crew members conducted experiments and also took blood and made measurements to determine how humans reacted to being in space.
The mission was considered a major Soviet triumph, and Soviet television showed both live and recorded footage of the three astronauts.
The fact that the Voskhod carried civilians was called an achievement that heralded a new era of space travel. The Russian space agency said the expedition made Feoktistov "the first spacecraft designer to have tested his brainchild under real conditions."
Feoktistov was born on Feb. 7, 1926, in Voronezh in southwestern Russia, near Ukraine. He fought and was wounded in the Second World War.
Before becoming an astronaut, he was one of the earliest designers of Soviet spacecraft. In a report in the late 1950s, "A Long-Range Program to Master Outer Space," he described how the Soviet Union should explore Earth's orbit, then the Moon, Venus and Mars. He also sketched plans for the first craft for human flight and a proposed landing technique.
