June 7th: The second Bulgarian astronaut Alexander Alexandrov goes into space
On June 7th 1988, the second Bulgarian astronaut Alexander Alexandrov went into space.
He was on board the Soviet spaceship Soiuz-TM-5 and along with the commander of the flight Anatolii Yakovlevich-Soloviov and the board-engineer Victor Petrovich Savinikh. The mission takes place between June 7th – 17th 1988.
Alexander Alexandrov graduates with the specialty pilot-engineer in 1974. By 1978, he serves in the military corpus of the air forces as a pilot of a bomber plane. In 1983, he concludes his studies in the Institute for space researches in the Academy of sciences in the former USSR. He received the scientific degree “candidate of the technical sciences” (nowadays – doctor).
On March 1st 1978, Alexandrov is chosen to be the astronaut in the second group of the Interkosmos program, along with the first Bulgarian astronaut – Georgi Ivanov.