Image of : Korolev, Sergei Pavlovitch. [photograph]
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Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, 1907–1966, born in Zhytomyr, Russia (today Ukraine)

As a rising star in aeronautical engineering, Korolev joined the Moscow GIRD, a rocket club, in 1931. By 1933, he was deputy chief of a new government rocket institute, where he oversaw the Soviet Union’s early liquid-propellant experiments. Arrested in 1938 during Stalin’s purges, he barely survived a Siberian concentration camp, then was held in various prisons until 1944. Korolev went on to manage the USSR’s ballistic missile program and directed its space program from Sputnik’s launch in 1957 until his death in 1966. 

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