On February 6, a postcard with a commemorative stamp dedicated to the 100th Birth Anniversary of Konstantin Feoktistov, a pilot-cosmonaut, a Hero of the Soviet Union, was put into postal circulation in the Space Exploration series

Konstantin Feoktistov (1926–2009) was a research scientist, a pilot-cosmonaut, a Hero of the Soviet Union, a Doctor of Technical Sciences, and a professor. He was a corresponding member of the International Academy of Astronautics, an engineer-designer of spacecraft and orbital stations. Feoktistov was the first civilian specialist in space.

Konstantin Feoktistov was born on February 7 of 1926, in Voronezh. In July of 1942, at the age of 16, he volunteered for the front. He was a reconnaissance man in the operative group of the headquarters within a military unit of the Voronezh Front of the Red Army.

In 1943, he entered the Faculty of Thermal and Hydraulic Machines at the Bauman Moscow Higher Technical University. After graduation from the University, he was appointed to SKB-385 in the city of Zlatoust, Chelyabinsk Region, where he held various positions from engineer to acting chief designer of the design bureau.

From 1951, he worked at Research Institute No. 4 in the village of Bolshevo (presently, a part of the city of Korolyov) in the Moscow Region. In 1957, he switched over to work in the Special Design Bureau No. 1 (OKB-1, nowadays, RKK Energia) headed by S. Korolev, where he participated in the development of the first artificial Earth satellite, supervised the design work of the Vostok and Voskhod spacecraft, and was the leading designer of the Soyuz and Progress series of spacecraft, as well as the Salyut and Mir orbital stations. As the head of the Voskhod spacecraft design team, K. Feoktistov became one of the two persons to test in space the spacecraft he had designed. He was one of the participants (in the capacity of a research cosmonaut) in the first multi-seat manned spacecraft flight in the history of space exploration, which took place on October 12–13 of 1964, which also became the world's first flight of cosmonauts without the use of spacesuits.

Since 1990, he lectured at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University.

The commemorative stamp provides a symbolic image of a launch vehicle ready to be launched into space; the main illustration shows a portrait of K. Feoktistov against the backdrop of the Voskhod-1 spacecraft.

In addition to the issue of the postcard with a commemorative stamp, JSC Marka produced special cancels for Moscow and Voronezh.


Design Artists: S. Ulyanovsky (stamp) and Kh. Betredinova (illustration).
Quantity: 5.5 thousand postcards.

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