Bulgarian cosmonaut program

The Bulgarian cosmonaut program refers to human spaceflight efforts by the People's Republic of Bulgaria. The idea of a Bulgarian crewed space mission predated the launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. An informal proposal for the Soviet Union to send a Bulgarian cosmonaut in space was issued in 1964, but it was not seriously considered by the Soviets. Official space cooperation began in 1966 with the establishment of the Interkosmos programme which allowed Communist Bloc countries to access Soviet space technology and assets.

Under Interkosmos, Bulgaria sent its first cosmonaut, Georgi Ivanov, to the Salyut 6 space station in 1979 and became the sixth country in the world to have a citizen in space. However, a malfunction in his Soyuz 33 spacecraft prevented the crew from docking, and Ivanov only spent 31 orbits around Earth before safely descending back to Earth. A second Bulgarian cosmonaut, Aleksandar Aleksandrov, spent ten days on the Mir Space Station in 1988 and performed a variety of scientific experiments.