Suborbital Russian

Aleksei Ledovskiy Phantom cosmonaut. . Died November 1957.

Personal: Male. Reported killed in a sub-orbital flight in November 1957.

Astronaut Career

Astronaut Group: Phantom Cosmonaut.

In December 1959, the Italian news agency Continentale reported that a series of cosmonaut deaths on suborbital flights had been revealed by a high-ranking Czech communist. Among these were Ledovsky, said to have perished in 1957. In fact Soviet Chief Designer did in 1956 contemplate manned suborbital flights atop his R-5A rocket. But the decision was made to proceed directly to manned orbital flights using the Vostok spacecraft. The R-5A did make some suborbital flights. Some were made with biological payloads, beginning on 27 August 1958 with the dogs Belyanka and Pestraya. But the payload compartment for these flights was much too narrow for a human passenger.