Mar 30 1978
From The Space Library
Nature magazine quoted Aleksei A. Leonov, deputy head of the Soviet Space Training Centre, as saying that plans were final for the next 2 Eastern Europe cosmonauts -a Pole and an East German, each with a Soviet companion-to go into orbit "before the end of the year." Representatives of other socialist bloc countries (including Cuba and Mongolia) had arrived at the Gagarin Space Centre to train for flights "before 1983" furthering socialist cooperation in space. The scientific (as opposed to the symbolic) value of such participation would clearly vary from country to country, the article said: Cuba and Mongolia, for example, would contribute mainly by providing tracking facilities rather than new science. Czechoslovakia; however, had made scientific contributions; Czech microbiologists had provided special Chlorella strains, including mutations derived from chlorophyll, that for the first time demonstrated active growth, previously retarded by space conditions. Although Chlorella experiments had been performed on Salyut 4 and at an earlier stage of the Salyut 6 mission, the unique collection of strains produced in Czechoslovakia had exhibited considerable difference. (Nature, Mar 30/78, 394)
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