Aleksandr Zheleznyakov

Aleksandr Borisovich Zheleznyakov, born in 1957, is a specialist in the design and production of rocket and space systems who is also a writer and journalist. He graduated as a physicist engineer from Kalinin Polytechnical Institute in 1980 and worked at the Impulse plant and the Krasnaya Zarya facility in Leningrad before moving in 1989 to the Raduga experimental design bureau, where he was a senior manager until 2001. From 2001 to 2007 he advised the director of the Central Research and Development Institute for Robotics and Technical Cybernetics in Saint Petersburg, and since 2007 he has been an advisor to the president of the S. P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia. Since 1989 he has written 17 books and hundreds of articles popularizing Russian and world astronautics, and he holds several honors including the Medal of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland.