The chief designer who built a Soviet satellite empire in the Siberian taiga
Baikonur, 1987. Gorbachev surveyed the satellites and asked: "You do all this in Siberia?" Reshetnev answered: "In Siberia. But we work with Moscow, Leningrad, and 200 other cities."
A rocket engineer who began as Korolev's deputy, in 1961 he founded the independent design bureau OKB-10 in the closed Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk-26. He delivered the Molniya, Strela, Raduga, and Ekran communications and broadcasting satellite families, expanded into geodesy, rescue, and navigation, and in 1982 launched the GLONASS global satellite navigation system. The enterprise he built, NPO PM (Applied Mechanics Science-Production Association), produced more than 30 space systems and over 1,000 satellites, accounting for two-thirds of all Soviet satellites; it survives today as ISS Reshetnev and remains the backbone of Russian satellite manufacturing. Hero of Socialist Labor, Lenin Prize laureate, and full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Career Timeline
- 1940–42Entered MAI; evacuated to Alma-Ata during the war
- 1942–46Serpukhov aviation mechanics school; mechanic, 26th Reserve Fighter Regiment
- 1950MAI honors graduate; rocket-theme diploma supervised by Tikhonravov
- 1950–57OKB-1 (Korolev): engineer → senior engineer → lead designer for R-11 missile
- 1958–59Deputy Chief Designer, OKB-1; CPSU member since 1951
- 1959–61Head of OKB-1 Eastern branch (Krasnoyarsk-26); took over light launcher from Yangel
- 1961–67Chief Designer, OKB-10; Kosmos launcher and Strela satellites first launched (1964)
- 1967–77General Designer, KB PM; developed Molniya, Raduga satellite families
- 1977–96General Designer & General Director, NPO PM; GLONASS (1982), Ekran, Gorizont, Luch
- 1974Hero of Socialist Labor
- 1980Lenin Prize
- 1984Full member (Academician), USSR Academy of Sciences