Dumitru Dorin Prunariu

Dumitru Dorin Prunariu
Country:	Romania
selected on	March 1, 1978
Calls:	1 space flight
Begin:	May 14, 1981
Landing:	May 22, 1981
Time in space:	7d 20h 41min 52s
retired on	May 22, 1981
Space flights
Soyuz 40 (1981)

Dumitru Dorin Prunariu (born September 27, 1952 in Oraşul Stalin, today Braşov ) is a Romanian pilot, diplomat and former cosmonaut . He is the first and so far only Romanian cosmonaut.

education

After graduating from the high school for physics and mathematics in Brașov in 1971, Prunariu studied aeronautical engineering at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest , where he obtained an aeronautical engineering degree in 1976. He then worked at the Industria Aeronautică Română (IAR) in Brașov, which specializes in combat aircraft . At the same time he attended the officers' school of the Romanian Air Force and became a pilot in 1977.

Astronaut activity

Leonid Popov and Dumitru Prunariu

The aeronautical engineer and pilot in the Romanian Air Force was accepted into the Interkosmos program as a cosmonaut on March 1, 1978 . In 1981 he flew with Soyuz 40 as a member of the eleventh guest team of this orbital station to Salyut 6 , where he held the function of a research cosmonaut. With the landing on May 22, 1981, Prunariu retired from the cosmonaut corps.

In 1990 Prunariu became director of the civil aviation program of the Republic of Romania, in 1998 president of the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA). Promoted to Major General of the Air Force in 2003 , later Lieutenant General, Prunariu was Ambassador of the Republic of Romania to Russia from 2004 to July 2005 , then Honorary President of ROSA (Romanian Space Agency).

Prunariu is married and has two children.

literature

• Peter Stache: spaceman from A to Z . Military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin [East] 1988, ISBN 3-327-00527-3 .

Web links

Commons : Dumitru Prunariu  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• spacefacts.de: Short biography