Marina Popovich
Marina Lavrentyevna Zhikhoreva was a Soviet Air Forces colonel, engineer, and decorated Soviet test pilot. In 1964, she became the third woman and the first Soviet woman to break the sound barrier. Known as "Madame MiG", for her work in the Soviet fighter, she set more than one hundred aviation world records on over 40 types of aircraft over her career.
Biography
Marina Vasilyeva was born on 20 July 1931 in the Velizhsky District of Smolensk Oblast, but evacuated with her family to Novosibirsk during World War II.She began learning to fly as a child but, following the war, the Soviet Union barred women from serving as military pilots. At the age of 16, presenting herself as 22 years old, she wrote to Soviet Marshal Kliment Voroshilov asking to be admitted to a flying school. Voroshilov intervened on her behalf and she was admitted to the Novosibirsk Aviation Technicum where she graduated in 1951.
Initially, she worked as an engineer, then later as a flying instructor. In 1962, she entered into the first group of women that would train to become cosmonauts in the Soviet space program. After two months of training, she was turned away from the program. Her husband, Pavel Popovich, was admitted to the program, becoming the eighth person in space aboard Vostok 4 in 1962.
She became a Soviet Air Forces pilot in 1963, and in 1964 was admitted as a military test-pilot. Later that year, she broke the sound barrier in a MiG-21. She entered the military reserves in 1978 and then joined the Antonov Design Bureau as a test pilot. At Antonov, she set ten flight records on the Antonov An-22 turboprop. She retired in 1984.
Marina Popovich, a Russian Writers' Union member, authored nine books, including the poetry collection Zhizn – vechny vzlyot. She was a co-author of two film scripts, Nebo So Mnoy and Buket Fialok.
A star in the Cancer constellation bears her name.
Popovich died on November 30, 2017. She was buried with military honors at the Federal Military Memorial Cemetery.