Oleg Grigoriyevich Kononenko
Oleg Grigoriyevich Kononenko was a member of Soviet cosmonaut group LII-1. He graduated from Zhukovsky Air Force Institute in 1975. On July 12, 1977, he was selected for cosmonaut training as a pilot of the Buran space shuttle. He survived an aircraft ejection on the Soviet aircraft carrier Minsk on December 27, 1979.
Kononenko was married three times and had four children. He was killed on September 8, 1980, in the crash of a Yakovlev Yak-38 VTOL fighter on takeoff from the Minsk in the South China Sea.
