Kachur, Ivan

Russian phantom cosmonaut. Said to have died in October 1960 in first attempted Soviet manned flight. Linked to model Khrushchev was to have revealed at UN. In fact, model was of Mars probe that failed.

The October 1959 edition of Ogonyok carried an article 'Flights to High Altitudes' illustrating three men testing life support equipment. Among them was a comrade Kachur. An Associated Press journalist concluded that these men were likely cosmonauts in training. There were extensive rumors of a pending Soviet space flight of importance in September-October 1960. Khrushchev, on a visit to New York, was said to have a model of a spacecraft that he would publicly reveal after its successful launch. In the event, nothing happened (it is now known that the first attempt to launch an unmanned probe to Mars had failed). News correspondents of the time speculated that there had been a manned space flight failure. Later the name of Kachur was associated with this supposed flight.