The first keynote speech at the 50th Anniverary of the Space Age event was made by video link to Professor Boris Chertok, who told the history of the Soviet space programme until the launch of Sputnik.
Professor Boris Chertok said that he was one of the last living witnesses to the early Soviet space programme.
After World War II, Stalin decided to modernise the Soviet Union's defence and Sergey Korolyov decided to fulfil Stalin's wish - nobody realised it might lead to Sputnik.
The theory of space exploration was well-established by the writings of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky who published pioneering papers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Germans become experts both in the interwar years and during the Second World War. The Soviets reached the V-2 production sites in 1945 and went on to build a replica of the V-2 called the R-1. The weight of the Soviet nuclear warheads required a powerful booster and this was developed during the 1950s.
After the United States announced its intention to launch a scientific satellite, the Soviet Union announced its intention to do the same, based on its military R-1 rocket. During celebrations for the centenary of Tsiolkovsky's birth in 1956 and in time for the International Geophysical Year of 1957/58, Korolyov announced that a light-weighing satellite could be quickly launched, beating the USA into space.
A simpler satellite than that planned the previous year, Sputnik 1 became the first satellite with its launch on 4 October 1957. It stunned citizens the world over.
Boris Chertok made an invaluable contributions to first the Soviet, and then the Russian space programme.
He joined the Soviet Research Institute of Aircraft Industry in 1930 as an electrical engineer. Immediately after the Second World War, he was head of the Rocket Technique Research Institute in Bleiherode, Germany. Back in the Soviet Union, he worked as one of the chief designers on control systems for rockets and space apparatus from 1947 to 1951. Professor Chertok served as deputy to the principal designer at the Central Design Bureau from 1951 to 1966 and at the Rocket and Space Energy Corporation from 1966 to 1992.
He was key to the design of the control systems of the Mir space station. For 15 years, research conducted on the Mir fostered breakthroughs in astronomy, space science, medicine and other disciplines.
An academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor Chertok is a recipient of the highest award in Russia, Hero of Socialist Labour, and a recipient of the Lenin Prize.
