[1] From 1937 to 1939, Nedelin fought in the Spanish Civil War as a foreign volunteer for the Republican Government, and the same year was appointed to command 13th Artillery Regiment in the Soviet Red Army.

[1][2] During the Cold War, Nedelin inadvertently played a key role in ushering in the Space Age by concluding that rockets were the ideal means to deliver a nuclear warhead to the United States instead of bombers, and ordered Sergei Korolev to develop the massive R-7 ICBM, capable of carrying a large warhead to the United States.

This rocket and its derivatives, while never an effective ICBM, was powerful enough to launch Sputnik, the world's first artificial Earth satellite, and then the Vostok manned space vehicles into orbit.

[3] Nedelin's death was officially listed as having occurred in a plane crash until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s uncovered the incident.

On December 20, 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin posthumously awarded the Order of Courage to Nedelin and the personnel who were responsible for preparing the R-16 missile.