Oleg Grigoriyevich Kononenko | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1938-08-16)August 16, 1938 |
| Died | September 8, 1980(1980-09-08) (aged 42) |
| Nationality | Soviet |
| Occupation | Pilot |
| Space career | |
| Cosmonaut | |
Oleg Grigoriyevich Kononenko (August 16, 1938 – September 8, 1980) was a member of Sovietcosmonaut group LII-1. He was born in the village of Samarskoye, inRostov,Russia, then part of the Soviet Union.[1] He graduated fromZhukovsky Air Force Institute in 1975.[2][3] On July 12, 1977, he was selected for cosmonaut training as a pilot of theBuran space shuttle. He survived an aircraft ejection on theSoviet aircraft carrierMinsk on December 27, 1979.[4]Kononenko was married three times and had four children.[4] He was killed on September 8, 1980, in the crash of aYakovlev Yak-38VTOL fighter on takeoff from theMinsk in theSouth China Sea.[2]
In 1958, Kononenko graduated as an instructor pilot at the Soviet Air Force academy in Saransk. In 1965, he also graduated as a test pilot at Zhukovskiy. Later, at the same academy, he became a helicopter pilot. In 1975, he graduated as a research pilot from the Moscow Aviation Institute. On July 12, 1977, Kononenko was selected as a member of one of the classes of cosmonauts who were due to carry out missions in the future on the space shuttle Buran, the first Russian reusable spacecraft, at the time under development. In 1979, he started his basic training for the position of cosmonaut. However, he maintained yet another degree, this time looking for the title of first class test driver. Kononenko was in the final stages of his cosmonaut tests when he was assigned to fly on a Yak-38 jet, taking off and landing vertically to perform some maneuvers over the China Sea as part of his training to obtain the first class test pilot title. On August 8, 1980, it took off with this aircraft from the aircraft carrierMinsk. However, moments after taking off, the plane failed in one of the engines and lost power, falling overboard before Kononenko had time to activate its ejector seat. The pilot died as soon as the plane hit the waters of the sea violently.[5] The crew of the aircraft carrier from which he had taken off immediately managed to recover his body. The ship then went to the city ofVladivostok, where Kononenko's body was left, and was later taken to Moscow, where he was buried with all honors. Kononenko posthumously received theOrder of Lenin medal (his second), but he was never officially considered a cosmonaut, as he died just a few months from the completion of basic training, which would give him this title.
Less than two months after Kononenko's death, another Soviet cosmonaut lost his life in aplane crash. This time, the victim wasLeonid Ivanov, who died in an accident with a jetMig-23. Exactly ten years and one day after Kononenko's death, another Soviet cosmonaut,Rimantas Stankevičius, also died in an accident, during a performance at anair show, inItaly.
A few years after the accident, Russia selected another cosmonaut whose name, oddly enough, was also Oleg Kononenko. This one was calledOleg Dmitriyevich Kononenko. He participated in his first space mission together with the cosmonautSergey Volkov, having spent a season aboard theInternational Space Station. This was not even the first occasion when two namesake cosmonauts were chosen as such. Previously, a Russian cosmonaut namedAleksandr Aleksandrov and a cosmonaut fromBulgaria namedAleksandr Aleksandrov had previously gone up into space.[6]