MOSCOW — Russian spaceship designer Boris Chertok, who played a key role in engineering Sovier-era space victories, has died. He was 99.
The state-controlled RKK Energiya rocket builder where he worked as a top consultant said Chertok died in Moscow Wednesday after contracting pneumonia.
For many years, Chertok served as a deputy to the father of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolyov. He was closely involved in putting the world’s first satellite in orbit on Oct. 4 1957 and preparing the first human flight to space by Yuri Gagarin on April 12 1961.
Chertok started his career as an aviation engineer in the 1940s. He specialized in control systems for rockets and spacecraft and published extensive memoirs chronicling the rise of the Soviet space program from its early days to the moon race the Soviet Union lost to the United States.
