The engineer who turned early Soviet spacecraft designs into tested machines
After the hatch was repaired, Gagarin told Ivanovsky: “You should have seen yourself while you were working on the hatch, your face had all the colours of tarnished metal.”
Oleg Ivanovsky became a rocket and spacecraft engineer after wartime service, helping turn the Soviet space programme’s early designs into working vehicles. As deputy to Mikhail Khomyakov, he led the assembly and testing of Sputnik 1, then worked on the Vostok spacecraft and the first lunar and planetary probes. After helping prepare Gagarin’s first flight, he directed automated lunar and planetary systems at the Lavochkin association and later preserved that history as a museum director.
Career Timeline
- 1940–1946Red Army border and cavalry service; served in the Great Patriotic War
- 1947–1954Technician and senior technician at NII-88; graduated from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute
- 1954–1957Designer at OKB-1, working on the first artificial satellites
- 1957–1961Deputy lead designer for Sputnik 1 and 2; lead designer of the Vostok spacecraft
- 1961–1965Head of the space section of the USSR Council of Ministers’ military-industrial commission
- 1965–1983Deputy and chief designer for lunar and planetary systems at the Lavochkin association
- 1983–2014Director and scientific consultant of the Lavochkin space-technology museum