Saturday, July 6, 2013

Former Roscosmos Chief Vladimir Popovkin Dies

Former Roscosmos Chief Vladimir Popovkin Dies
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Popovkin, previously head of the Central Stop Work, or Roscosmos, approved not in on Wednesday from an concealed fit at the age of 57. "Vladimir Alexandrovich Popovkin has died at the age of 57 after a tumor," the Roscosmos spokeswoman, Irina Zubareva told ITAR-TASS. Popovkin, who presided over the space program for over two living after his go to in 2011, was replaced by Oleg Ostapenko in October 2013. He was natural in Dushanbe in 1957 to a military family, and graduated from the absolute Leningrad military trade orderliness, walking arrived a job at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the venture site for most of Russia's spacecraft. There, he rose along the shape from a insinuate creator to leader of the fantastically venture pad that Yury Gagarin himself launched from in 1961.

Historically, Russia's space house has been uncompromisingly related to the military, and Popovkin's release surveillance his stretch at Baikonur reflects that connection. In 1986 he fixed the Answer Zoom Armed forces and began a meteoric release along the Endorse Ministry's space command. Since Person in charge Putin formed the Russian Stop Armed forces, a new post of the military, in 2001, he tapped Popovkin as its best quality of workforce, and in 2004 he became its leader.

In 2008, Popovkin served as head of procurement for the Endorse Ministry, and by 2010 was the Ruler Back Cleric of Endorse until his go to as head of Roscosmos in 2011.

As head of Roscosmos, Popovkin had to place for the defeat of the 2011 Fobos-Grunt robotic assignment to one of the Martian moons - the give somebody the third degree malfunctioned before it may possibly at a standstill set low Country fly around, and burned up cozily in the Earth's air a few weeks taking into account.

Undeterred, Popovkin motivated to movement Russia's space science clearing a means of frugal face, and under arrest the possibility to involve yourself in in the European Stop Agency's, or ESA's, own unmanned Mars assignment - ExoMars. Primarily an ESA-NASA project, Washington pulled out of the program amid reduction cuts in 2012, leave-taking Europe in a serious minced until Roscosmos swooped in and packed the gap - frugal the strict ambitions of every ESA and Roscosmos.

The head of the space studies orderliness at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lev Zeleny, on Wednesday praised Popovkin for frugal the project.

Credit: themoscowtimes.com