On the occasion of the anniversary of a quarter of century since the flight into space of the first Romanian astronaut, Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu, Romfilatelia, the company specialized in issuing and trading Romanian postage stamps, releases the postage stamp issue 25 years since the first flight of a Romanian in the Cosmos, overprint of the perforated souvenir sheet of the issue “Philatelic World Exhibition ESPAMER 1996 – Aviation and Astronautics”, released in 1996 on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the event, whose stamp illustrates the face of the Romanian astronaut.
Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu was born on the 27th of September 1952 in Brasov and he is the first Romanian astronaut to fly into space. He graduated the mathematics-physics High School of Brasov in 1971 and the Polytechnic University of Bucharest in 1976, specializing in aeronautic engineering. The he worked for a short time at IAR Brasov, and in 1977 he became a pilot in the military air force.
In 1978 he was selected for the “Intercosmos” training program for space flights. Between the 14th and the 22nd of May 1981, Prunariu became the first Romanian astronaut to fly into space, aboard the “Soyuz 40” spaceship. He spent almost eight days on the “Salyut 6” Orbital Complex together with the Russian astronaut Leonid Ivanovici Popov, accomplishing scientific experiments, including a study of the magnetic field of Earth.
The face value of Lei 2.10 has been overprinted on the perforated souvenir sheets with gold foil and silver foil, and the title of the issue, the month and the year have been overprinted on the perforated souvenir sheet margin.
The issue is completed by 2 maxicards.
