In May 1981, Romanian Dumitru Prunariu and Leonid Popov’s Soyuz 40
\ndocked with the Soviet orbital station Salyut 6. After 7 days, 20 hours and 42
\nminutes spent in outer space, the two cosmonauts safely landed in Kazakhstan on
\nMay 22nd. The flight was part of the Soviet programme Interkosmos,
\nthrough which, the former USSR invited the socialist countries in Eastern
\nEurope and not only to participate with cosmonauts in joint space efforts.
\nRomanian Dumitru Prunariu has been the first and so far the only Romanian
\ncosmonaut, his mission being a landmark in Romania’s aeronautics history.
\nDuring an anniversary event staged by the Foreign Ministry in Bucharest four
\ndecades later, cosmonaut Prunariu has recollected the flight conditions and the
\nexperiments he conducted on board of the Soviet space laboratory.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Dumitru Prunariu: Our spaceflight included a
\nseries of experiments initiated by Romanian scientists, from various research
\ninstitutes, most of them working for the Central Institute of Physics based in
\nMagurele at that time. Others were medical experiments, focusing on the way in
\nwhich the human body adjusts to weightlessness in space, experiments that were
\ncarried on later after landing when a series of body measurements were made.
\nScientists were also trying to assess the way in which the human body readjusts
\nto earth conditions after landing. Some of the experiments pertained to
\nastrophysics and the study of space radiation – I for instance took measurements,
\nwith a digital device made in Romania, of the radiation level over various
\nregions of the planet, particularly mainly over South Atlantic. This region
\narrested the scientists’ attention for the anomalies in the Earth’s magnetic
\nfield. I registered here values of cosmic radiation 20 times higher than in the
\nother areas at the same altitude. I also studied the structure of heavy
\nparticles at various altitudes, and did some technological experiments such as
\nthe possibility of obtaining high purity materials to be used in the
\nelectronics industry including in solar panels to produce energy in outer
\nspace.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
‘What impressed me the most upon reaching outer space was the thin
\natmospheric layer. If you were to compare the Earth to an apple, the atmosphere
\nwouldn’t be thicker than its peel. It is almost shocking to understand the fact
\nthat life developed and is going under that thin layer and that we, in our
\nignorance, are polluting, poisoning what we are breathing and what we are going
\nto leave to the next generations to breathe while cutting down forests which
\nare the planet’s oxygen factory’, cosmonaut Dumitru Prunariu has further cautioned. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
But what is the future of space exploration looking like? Is this future
\ngoing to belong to governments as in the past or is it going to be influenced
\nby the private initiative?<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Here is again Romanian cosmonaut Dumitru
\nPrunariu: The future will
\narguably be a cooperation between the two initiatives. As you see not only the
\ngovernments are investing in this field, as business opportunities have
\ndeveloped in this domain as well and now Elon Musk is sending people to the
\nInternational Space Station. He is also building and testing a giant spacecraft
\nto carry infrastructure elements for a permanent moonbase and is also planning
\nto send crews of up to 20 people to the Moon and also to Mars. Elon Musk is a
\nvisionary, an entrepreneur who knows how to use his money to both support the
\nUS government in developing space activities, as he is cooperating with NASA on
\nmost of his programmes, and to make profit, do business with the rockets he
\nbuilt, which have exceeded by far the limits initially imposed by government
\nstandards. They are reusable rockets and their cost is significantly lower. Two
\nyears ago he covered about 20% of the total commercial launches of satellites.
\nGovernment agencies have followed suit started studying the possibility of
\nbuilding reusable rockets to lower the costs of space exploration. At present
\nthe cost to launch a kilogram of payload to space is somewhere around 15-20
\nthousand dollars, but it will decrease significantly in the future. Not only
\nElon Musk but also Jeff Bezos, who is the world’s richest man, has been involved
\nin space exploration and is planning to send tourists into the orbit. He also
\nenvisages suborbital spaceflights at affordable prices for the rich, somewhere
\naround a few hundred thousand dollars. Mars is also one of the main targets of
\nspace exploration because scientists believe that life existed on that planet
\nlong time ago. There are signs that water existed on Mars long before and it
\nstill exists in various forms today. US rover Perseverance is presently looking
\nfor ancient life in Jezero Crater where it landed on the Red Planet. A Chinese
\nspacecraft, which landed on the Moon is also doing the same kind of research in
\na different area of the Earth’s natural satellite. Competition in the area of
\nspace exploration will be forcing governments to cooperate with private
\nentrepreneurs. Even countries like China and Russia are encouraging the private
\ninitiative in the area, although in these countries, government structures are almost
\nexclusively in charge of space exploration at this time. Private initiative
\nproved to have achieved more and fared better in this area than the limited
\ngovernment structures, and that will eventually lead to development. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
2021 is a great year in terms of anniversaries related to space
\nexploration. Besides the present event of marking 40 years since the first
\nspaceflight of a Romanian cosmonaut, two other landmarks in the history of
\naeronautics are being celebrated: 70 years since the first manned space flight,
\nwhen Yuri Gagarin became the first man to fly into outer space (12th
\nApril 1961) and 40 years since the flight of Columbia, the first space shuttle.
\n<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bucharest has recently hosted an event to mark 40 years since the first spaceflight of a Romanian cosmonaut<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":131258,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43939],"tags":[44645,36048,44646,44644,44643,44642],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-156557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-future-starts-today","tag-cosmonaut","tag-mars","tag-moon","tag-prunariu","tag-salyut","tag-soyuz"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n