This Echo is READ ONLY !   NO Un-Authorized Messages Please!
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alexander Kemurdjian, Chief Designer of the Lunakhod, Dies
By Louis D. Friedman
The Planetary Society
26 February 2003

Alexander Kemurdjian, the Chief Designer of the historic first rover 
on another world, the Soviet Lunokhod, died on Feburary 24 in his home 
city of St.  Petersburg. He was a close friend and colleague of The 
Planetary Society and a leader of the team that introduced the virtues 
of a Mars rover to the world in our international testing program in 
the late 1980s. At the time no Mars rover was planned by any nation.

Kemurdjian was the Founder and First Director of Space & Robotics 
Division of VNII- Transmash from 1962 to 1992.  He, and his institute, 
were largely unknown outside the Soviet Union, being part of a secret 
Soviet military facility more famous for its work on tank development.
Only in the era of "glasnost" did contact with the west become 
possible for him.

He became close friends with several of us at The Planetary Society, 
and our staff and rover-team colleagues have deep and fond personal 
reminiscences of time spent with him in Pasadena, in his home in 
(then) Leningrad, and on slopes of remote volcanoes in Kamchatka. Only 
two memories will I mention here, both our visit to Kamchatka at 
during the attempted coup against Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

We were all gathered around a small television, watching the coup 
leaders tell of their plans to restore "order" to the Soviet Union. 
Kemurjian, an old Soviet military veteran and official "Hero of the 
Battle of Leningrad," got up in disgust and left the room with just 
one word, "Dilettantes!" The rest of us then knew that the coup was 
not going to succeed.

I have a very different memory of standing on the shores of the 
Pacific Ocean in Kamchatka, looking eastward toward America, and 
making rueful jokes about maybe having to swim home. Kemurjian and Bud 
Schurmeier (our long-time consultant and legendary JPL project 
manager), the oldest men in our group (both septuagenarians), stripped 
and went for a swim in the cold waters. The rest of us were too timid.

Not only was Kemurdjian responsible for the first (and still only) 
automated Moon rovers, but in a much less well-known achievement, he 
created the first Mars rover as well. His small rover actually made it 
to the surface successfully on the Soviet 1971 Mars lander - but the 
lander failed.

He led the development of the Marsokhod, still regarded as one of the 
most brilliant mobility and mechanical designs for planetary rovers. 
It was to have flown on a Soviet  The Marsokhod Mars mission, first 
labeled Mars 92, then Mars 94 and then Mars 96. But the end of the 
Soviet Union led to the scaling back and then cancelling of Russian 
plans for this rover. It is still of interest for future exploration, 
albeit with more modern systems of control and navigation. In fact, on 
my last trip to Moscow, I observed a meeting of European and Russian 
scientists studying its possible application for future missions. The 
Planetary Society is considering using Kemurjian's design as a test 
platform in our nascent Mars Outpost program.

Kemurdjian's work has had extraordinary influence on robotic designs 
in Europe and the United States, as well as, of course, in Russia. He 
was an Academician in the prestigious Soviet Academy of Cosmonautics. 
Beyond his influence on robotics, and our attempts to promote Mars 
rovers, he was profoundly influential in putting a human face on the 
concept of Soviet-American cooperation. I was always struck by this 
man -- a Soviet military secret, living in obscurity (from the West) 
in Leningrad, and working in a army tank factory -- who turned out to
be a warm, gracious colleague and friend to so many of us, opening up 
his institute, his work, his home and his heart to us.

 - End of File -
================

---