AKADEMIK SERGEY KOROLYOV

[shipstamps]

Built as a space-control (monitoring) vessel on the Chernomorskiy Shipyard at Nicolaieff for the Russian Government.
Launched under the name AKADEMIK SERGEY KOROLYOV, named after the Russian space rocket designer Sergey P. Korolyov (1907-1966.) http://www.odessit.com/namegal/english/korolev.htm
Tonnage 17.114 gross, 2.158 net, 7.180 dwt., dim. 181.90 x 25.05 x 8.0m. (draught) length bpp. 167.8m.
Powered by one 8-cyl Bryansk diesel engine, 12.000 bhp, speed 17.5 knots.

1996 Sold by the Ukraine owners to Indian shipbreakers and she passed through the Bosporus on 05 July 1996 under the name OROL for the breakers.

Russia 1980 6k sg 5056.
Ukraine 1997 40k sg 191

Source. Soviet Merchant Ships by Ambrose Greenway. Register of Merchant Ships completed in 1970. Marine News 1996/632.

[Arturo]

The Akademik Sergei Korolev was a space control-monitoring ship constructed in 1970 to support the Soviet space program. Named after Sergei Korolev, the head Soviet rocket engineer and designer during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s, the ship also conducted upper atmosphere and outer space research.

In Soviet times, the Akademik Sergei Korolev was a large communications ship which was part of a fleet of communications ships. These ships greatly extended the tracking range when the orbits of cosmonauts and unmanned missions were not within range of Soviet land-based tracking stations. The ship mainly operated in the Atlantic Ocean monitoring spacecraft trajectory, telemetry data, and guaranteed a communications link with the cosmonauts.

The ship had about 1200 accommodations, including 79 laboratories, in which 188 scientific workers performed their duties.

In 1975, the ship was a part of the Soviet-American Apollo-Soyuz joint test program.

Russia, 1983, S.G.?, Scott; 5138

(Other stamps; Sergei Korolev)

Source: Wikipedia