Leonid Kostyantynovych Kadenyuk was the first astronaut of independent Ukraine to fly into outer space.
19 Facts About Leonid Kadenyuk
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Leonid Kadenyuk was Deputy of Ukraine of the 4th convocation, adviser to the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Chairman of the State Space Agency of Ukraine, and Honorary Doctor of Chernivtsi National University.
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Leonid Kadenyuk was born on 28 January 1951 in the village of Klishkivtsi in the Khotyn Raion of the Chernivtsi Oblast in Ukraine, to a family of rural teachers.
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Leonid Kadenyuk began his service in the Soviet Air Forces and was selected in 1976 for the Soviet Cosmonaut Corps.
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Between 1984 and 1988 Leonid Kadenyuk was a test pilot of the State Research Institute of the USSR Air Force.
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Leonid Kadenyuk was removed from a team of test pilots of Buran due to marital issues.
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Leonid Kadenyuk was allowed to rejoin the Cosmonaut Detachment several years later.
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Leonid Kadenyuk took part in working out the glide path of descent for landing the spacecraft Buran using MiG-31 and MiG-25 aircraft.
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Leonid Kadenyuk was trained by NASA for a space flight on Space Shuttle Columbia's mission STS-87 as a payload specialist.
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Leonid Kadenyuk studied the Soyuz, Soyuz-TM, Buran spacecraft, the Salyut orbital station, the Mir orbital complex, and the US Space Shuttle.
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Leonid Kadenyuk was trained to conduct scientific experiments on board spacecraft in various fields: biology, medicine, metrology, ecology, study of natural resources of the Earth from space, geology, astronomy, geobotany.
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Therefore, Leonid Kadenyuk Kostyantynovych ordered it to signal the awakening of the crew, which was broadcast from the Flight Control Center on board the "Columbia".
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Leonid Kadenyuk participated in the development and testing of aerospace systems, in their sketch and layout design, as well as in-flight tests of systems.
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Leonid Kadenyuk flew more than 50 types and modifications of aircraft for various purposes, mainly on fighters, as well as on the American training aircraft Northrop T-38.
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Leonid Kadenyuk was appointed Major general of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 1998 and became Deputy Inspector General of the General Military Inspectorate under the President of Ukraine for Aviation and Cosmonautics.
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Leonid Kadenyuk worked within parliament's Committee on Defense and National Security.
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On 19 January 1998, Leonid Kadenyuk received the Order "For Courage" I degree of the Distinction of the President of Ukraine for outstanding contribution to the international prestige of the national space industry and personal courage and heroism shown during the Ukrainian-American scientific research aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia.
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Leonid Kadenyuk died on 31 January 2018 from a heart attack during his morning run in a park in Kyiv.
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Leonid Kadenyuk was interred in the central avenue of Kyiv's Baikove Cemetery.