Ulaanbaatar, March 22, 2023 /MONTSAME/.  Today marks the 42nd anniversary of the first space flight by a Mongolian.

On this day in 1981, Hero of the Mongolian People’s Republic, Hero of the USSR Jugderdemidiin Gurragchaa along with twice Hero of USSR, Hero of Mongolian People’s Republic, Soviet cosmonaut V.A.Dzhanibekov flew into space on the Soyuz 39 spacecraft, landing back on Earth at 7.42 pm on March 30.

With this event, Mongolia became the 10th country in the world to send off a cosmonaut into space, and Mongolian cosmonaut J. Gurragchaa became the 2nd person in Asia, and the 101st person in the world to fly into space.

While in orbit, 36 experiments and research were carried out in the fields of medical care and biology, physics and technology, and remote sensing, which laid out the foundations for the development of space science in Mongolia. 

Incidentally, a MONTSAME team of seven, comprised of columnists, reporters, and photographers covered the events related to the flights between 1978 and 1981 and took over 60 percent of all photographs of the space flights in Mongolia, especially those in the archives.