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# fc055 Progress M-18/MIR/Soyuz TM-16 flown drawing-l

Original water colour drawing with letter was sent to cosmonauts Soyuz TM-16/MIR-13 expedition Manakov and Poleschuk from school of village Efimovka near Russian Siberian city Orenburg- hometown of cosmonaut Gennadiy Manakov.In 1967 he gratuated this school. Fourth grade students of school made water colour drawings and wrote short letters-greetings to cosmonauts on board.Drawings were delivered to space station MIR 24 may, 1993 on board of transport cargo space ship Progress M-18.Cosmonauts cancelled each drawing with 3 on board handstamps.On front side handstamp dated 24.05.93 (day of docking with Progress M-18) and two more handstamps on reverse side of each drawing.Letters-greetings on drawings had three variants (probably teacher gave them to children as samples to be copied from the black-board in class room).In these letters from individual boys and girls kids wish to cosmonauts successes on orbit, good health, safe return to Motherland and promise to take an example from cosmonauts and to study well.In each individual letter mentioned name of sender and autor of drawing.They are all kids of grade-4 . Cosmonauts carried these items back to Earth 22 july, 1993.Commander of this flight Gennadiy Manakov notared each drawing with `Board of Station MIR, Manakov` in Russian language and signed during our meeting in his Star City home august 2002. These items received from him then along with other materials from his flight and personal archives. In june 2003 board engineer of this flight Alexander Poleshuk signed and notared these drawings in English already here in my LA house.A very interesting fact he told me about Progress M-18 ship delivered these drawings.Cosmonauts did an experimet with this cargo ship.Ship was undocked from MIR station same hour when arrived from Earth Soyuz TM-17 team and docked at the same place july 3, 1993. This experiment had a name `Rodeo`. Total on board to cosmonauts sent 9 drawings with letters from best students of fourth grade of this school, where Manakov was a student back in 60-s.
 # fc055            Progress M-18/MIR/Soyuz TM-16 flown drawing-l 1
 # fc055            Progress M-18/MIR/Soyuz TM-16 flown drawing-l 2
 # fc055            Progress M-18/MIR/Soyuz TM-16 flown drawing-l 3

This product was added to our catalog on Friday 13 December, 2002.