Kondratyuk

Lat: 14.9°S, Long: 115.5°E, Diam: 108 km, Depth: km, Rükl: (farside)

Named for Yuri Vasilievich Kondratyuk (June 21, 1897 - 1942), the pseudonym adopted by Oleksandr Gnatovich Shargei, a pioneer of astronautics and spaceflight. He was a theoretician and a visionary who, in the early twentieth century, foresaw ways of reaching the moon. During his time of military service, he filled four notebooks with his ideas of interplanetary flight. These included suggesting the use of a modular spacecraft to reach the Moon, leaving the propulsion section of the vehicle in orbit while a smaller lander journeyed to the surface and back (the strategy eventually adopted independently by the engineers of the Apollo program). He included detailed calculations of a trajectory to take a spacecraft from Earth orbit to lunar orbit and back to Earth orbit, a trajectory now known as "Kondratyuk's route" or "Kondratyuk's loop".
Kondratyuk was among the long list of farside names approved by the IAU in 1970 and published in Menzel, 1971.
In the planning for Apollo 8, the first manned circumlunar mission (1968), this crater (which did not then have an official name) was referred to informally as "Haise" (see: Phil Stooke's LPOD).

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This page has been edited 1 times. The last modification was made by - tychocrater tychocrater on Jun 13, 2009 3:24 pm - afx3u2