Georgi Ivanov

He was first married to Natalya Rousanova, with whom he had a daughter, Ani, born in 1967. However, the couple divorced in 1982.

He remarried Lidia, with whom he fathered a son, Ivan, who was born in 1984.

He enjoys underwater fishing, skiing, and golfing during his leisure time

Georgi Ivanov was born as Georgi Kakalov on July 2, 1940, in Lovech, Bulgaria, to Ivan Ivanov Kakalov and Anastasiya Kakalova.

He completed his schooling in 1958 and later graduated from Military Air-force School, Dolna Mitropolia, in 1964, specializing as a flight engineer and class-I pilot.

After completing the five-year program, Ivanov served in the Bulgarian Army as a military pilot and a few years later he became an instructor.

A few years later, he was appointed as squadron commander of fighter aircraft in the Bulgarian air force.

In 1978, he was selected as a member of the Soviet Union’s International Space Intercosmos Programme. Here, he was forced to change his surname to ‘Ivanav’ from ‘Kakalov’ due to its negative implication in the Russian language.

He completed a rigorous training, after which he was chosen for the fourth mission of the Intercosmos program to travel into space.

He started his journey to the Salyut 6 orbital station, along with Soviet commander Nikolai Rukavishnikov, in the Soyuz 33 manned space flight, which was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on April 10, 1979.

By boarding the Soyuz 33 mission, he became the first astronaut of Bulgarian nationality to leave Earth and travel into space.

Through his space flight in 1979, he helped Bulgaria enter the privileged club of ‘astronaut nations’, thereby making it the sixth nation in the world to send cosmonauts in space.