Galaktion Yeliseyevich Alpaidze was a Russian military officer of Georgian ethnicity in the former Soviet Army whose career saw military actions in the eastern front of the World War II.
Galaktion Alpaidze
Plesetsk Cosmodrome is a Russian spaceport located in Mirny, Arkhangelsk Oblast, about 800 km north of Moscow and approximately 200 km south of Arkhangelsk. As of 2024, it is Europe's only operational orbital spaceport and the northernmost spaceport in the world. Originally developed as an ICBM site for the R-7 missile, it also served for numerous satellite launches using the R-7 and other rockets. Its high latitude makes it useful only for certain types of launches, especially the Molniya orbits, so for much of the site's history it functioned as a secondary location, with most orbital launches taking place from Baikonur, in the Kazakh SSR. With the end of the Soviet Union, Baikonur became a foreign territory, and Kazakhstan charged $115 million usage fees annually. Consequently, Plesetsk has seen considerably more activity since the 2000s.
The trajectory of the missile flight from Plesetsk to the Kura Missile Test Range (5,700 km).
1967 photo from a US spy satellite
Launch of the Angara A5