Cosmonautics Day in Pridnestrovie

The Vostok-1 spacecraft with a man on board took off into space and, having flown around the entire globe in 108 minutes, returned safely to Earth 63 years ago, on April 12, 1961, at 9:07 am Moscow time. The first person to fly into space was the USSR pilot-cosmonaut, Major Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin. He opened a new space era for humanity and forever inscribed his name in world history that day.

Residents of Tiraspol bring fresh flowers to the monument to the first cosmonaut every year, on Cosmonautics Day. Deputies of the Supreme Council of the PMR, members of the Renewal Republican Party were among them.

Gagarin Boulevard in the capital of Pridnestrovie was formerly called Sportivny. The Tiraspol City Council made the decision to rename it on the day of Gagarin’s flight - April 12, 1961. A monument to the space pioneer was opened on the boulevard in 1977.

There are streets that are named after those who brought man into space - Tsiolkovsky, Korolev and Gagarin himself in the cities of Pridnestrovie, as in many cities of the former Soviet Union. There is a Technical College named after Gagarin in Tiraspol. It was the students of this college (then called Tiraspol State Technical University No. 5) who were the first to receive the radio signal from the Vostok-1 spacecraft. They discovered unknown signals with speech while listening to the air as usual on April 12, 1961.

Pridnestrovie has its own space history. Enterprises in our region produced equipment parts, spacecraft skins, and food for astronauts. The Moldavizolit plant made its contribution to space exploration, which in the 80s of the 20th century became a leading enterprise in the USSR, providing almost 85% of the market for dielectric materials of the Union and Eastern Europe. Printed circuit boards, on which most of the electronic equipment (including for rocket and space technology) were produced, were manufactured using materials from the Moldavizolit plant. The Metallithography plant of Tiraspol produced aluminum tubes for “space food” from 1975 to 1985. Canned food for astronauts was also produced in Pridnestrovian factories.

Cosmonauts have visited our republic many times. Dnestrovsk was visited by the pilot-cosmonaut, Hero of the Soviet Union Pavel Popovich in 1965. Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, pilot-cosmonaut Viktor Gorbatko came to Tiraspol in 1974. He was awarded the title "Honorary Citizen of Tiraspol".

The republic was visited in 2019 by pilot-cosmonauts awarded the titles Hero of the Soviet Union and Hero of the Russian Federation, Alexander Ivanchenkov, Musa Manarov, Anatoly Artsebarsky, Sergei Treshchev, as well as Vladimir Tomchuk, who gave more than three decades of service and work at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Guests of honor took part in the opening of the museum of the Buket Moldavii plant. It is no coincidence, because it was at this plant that the “Senetate”drink was created in 1976.

The unique strong drink “Senetate”, which was later renamed “Cosmic”, was produced for a long time only for Star City. Industrial production began only in 1982. The label for it was designed by the famous cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.

There are “space” exhibits in the museum of the KVINT plant in Tiraspol. For example, there is a bottle of White Stork cognac that has been in space. At least that’s what three cosmonauts say, added Oleg Bayev.