 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.The launch of "Sputnik 1" in October 1957 provided impetus for the first steps of space research in Bulgaria.