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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;CamaroDMD, post: 7749569, member: 5233&quot;]As the title above suggests, I love Space Themed coins.&nbsp; I have a lifelong passion for spaceflight and have other hobbies that tie into that.&nbsp; As a result, I gravitate towards space themed coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>I would love anyone to post other space themed coins.&nbsp; I am always looking to discover coins with this theme that I am unaware of.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, this coin is one of my favorites.&nbsp; This is a 10 Mark Clad proof produced by East Germany at their Berlin mint in 1978.&nbsp; It commemorates the 1978 joint Soviet-East German spaceflight that took place that same year.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>The business strike version of this coin is pretty common with a mintage of 748,000.&nbsp; But the proof is rare with a mintage of only 2,200. </p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/dAfv0VA.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>A little about the joint USSR-GDR mission.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the later 1970s, the USSR was operating their own orbital space station Salyut 6.&nbsp; To support the long duration missions, the USSR had to launch periodic manned flights to the station.&nbsp; The reason for this was that their manned spacecraft, the Soyuz, only had a 90 day lifespan.&nbsp; If the USSR wanted to conduct longer missions (and they did), spacecraft swap flights would have to happen to ensure the long duration crew always had a fresh spacecraft on the station.</p><p><br /></p><p>With the upcoming US Space Shuttle and promise by the US to fly astronauts onboard from allied nations, the USSR decided to beat them to it and fly their crew members from their allied nations as part of their &quot;Interkosmos Program.&quot;&nbsp; Basically, they would give one of the 2 seats on a week long capsule swap flight to a crewmember from an allied communist country.&nbsp; This began in 1978 with the flight of a Czech crewmember.</p><p><br /></p><p>The third such flight was Soyuz 31.&nbsp; It launched on August 26, 1978, and carried East German cosmonaut Sigmund Jahn into space (along with a USSR commander Valeri Bykovski).&nbsp; He became the first German citizen in space.&nbsp; They successfully docked with Salyut 6 and spending a week in orbit.&nbsp; Bykovski and Jahn returned to Earth on September 3, 1978, onboard Soyuz 29.</p><p><br /></p><p>This coin commemorates Jahn&#039;s mission.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Sigmund Jahn would eventually become a Major General in the GDR Air Force in charge of training future cosmonauts.&nbsp; He died in 2019 at the age of 82.</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/80zq4W6.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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