Exhibition Presenting Bulgarian Contribution to Space Exploration Unveiled at Aviation Museum in Krumovo
An exhibition presenting the Bulgarian contribution to space exploration was unveiled at the Aviation Museum in the village of Krumovo, near Plovdiv, on Friday. The opening of Path to the Stars marks the 45th anniversary of the flight of the first Bulgarian cosmonaut Georgi Ivanov as well as World Aviation and Cosmonautics Day, said Aviation Museum Director Radka Banyalieva.
The exhibition tells the story of Bulgaria’s participation in the Interkosmos Soviet space programme through photos and documents about the life of Georgi Ivanov and the training he went through, said Banyalieva. “New generations of young people are growing up who have hardly heard about these accomplishments, so our goal was to present the full picture of what happened,” Banyalieva pointed out.
Bulgaria is the third country in the world to have created space food after the Soviet Union and the USA, and the sixth to have sent its own cosmonaut. “As much as we live with the thought that we are a small country, we have a significant contribution to the mastery of space,” noted Banyalieva. The exhibition also explains how and why Bulgarian scientists study the ionosphere – the layer of the Earth’s atmosphere on which the life of our planet largely depends, as well as many interesting facts about the flight of cosmonaut Alexander Alexandrov.