April 1, 2014
Categories: GCTC, Roscosmos, Russia

Roscosmos Head Councellor, Hero of Russian Federation, cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov was officially appointed to the position of GCTC acting head, – Roscosmos press-office secretary Irina Zubareva reports.

“Appointing order was signed on Monday. Since Tuesday, April 1, Yuri Lonchakov takes up the duties of GCTC acting Head”, – she sated.

Lonchakov was born on March 4, 1965 in Kazakhstan. He served in the naval aviation of Baltic Navy forces, then in air defense corps. In 1998 he graduated from Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy and became a member of cosmonauts corps. He performed 3 space flights, the first one – onboard Endeavor shuttle. Lonchakov has been preparing to fly to the ISS onboard Soyuz TMA-16M as a crew commander in 2015 but made up his mind to leave the corps late summer 2013. When Oleg Ostapenko became Roscosmos head, Yuri Lonchakov was appointed to the position of his Councellor.

As was reported earlier the contract of GCTC previous head Sergey Krikalev, expired late March 2014, won’t be prolonged. Currently Krikalev is on 3 months vacation. Earlier he reported that he is going to accept Roscosmos proposal and deal with forming new structure of Russian manned cosmonautics strategic development. This structure is to be formed on the basis of Roscosmos main institute – TsNIIMash.

The spokesman for space industry stated week ago that GCTC will be headed either by Yuri Lonchakov or cosmonaut Yuri Gizenko. That time Roscosmos reported that candidates for GCTC head position were to be considered this week.

More from this category:
September 24, 2020

Soyuz MS-17 prime and back-up crews successfully passed exams in GCTC, – press-office representative reported. “Both prime comprising Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov…

full story
August 6, 2013

Launches of light-class Rokot carrier rockets will resume in the first half of September following a nine-month suspension due to attempts to fix a glitch…

full story
August 28, 2013

For the first time in world history Roscosmos arranged direct communication session with Russian crew members of the ISS at MAKS-2013 Airshow, – Roscosmos spokesman…

full story
August 15, 2014

RSC Energia specialists arranged for  Soyuz TMA-15M crew commander Anton Shkaplerov practical trainings on  Russian ISS segment onboard software update, on operating earth’s surface shots…

full story
November 1, 2021

The Guiana Space Center (French Guiana) has begun preparations for the Soyuz-ST rocket launch with Galileo spacecraft. In accordance with the schedule of works on…

full story
September 26, 2019

The crew of the “Soyuz MS-15” spacecraft on September 26, 2019 went aboard the International Space Station. After this, the first communication session of the…

full story
November 6, 2015

Roscosmos cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi passed exam on manual controlled descent. TS-7 specialized simulator on the basis of Tsf-7 centrifuge was…

full story
March 5, 2021

Intensive prelaunch preparations of the Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the Fregat upper stage and OneWeb spacecraft are underway at the Vostochny Cosmodrome. On March 1,…

full story