«Вперёд, на Марс!» (Forward to Mars!) was the personal motto of Friedrich Zander, one of the pioneers of Soviet rocketry. For the 130th anniversary of his birth the Pridnestrovian Republican Bank issued a rouble in its «Space Exploration» series; the coin entered circulation on 7 August 2017.

The centre of the reverse shows the scientist’s portrait, with flying craft against the stars on the right. Above runs «Ф.А. ЦАНДЕР» (F. A. Zander), below are his life dates «1887-1933». The obverse bears the state arms of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, the bank’s name, the date «2017» and the denomination «1 РУБЛЬ».

Zander was born in Riga in 1887 and studied at the Riga Polytechnic Institute. As early as 1908 he proposed growing plants in space greenhouses, in the 1920s he wrote about the solar sail, and later he took part in creating GIRD-X, the first Soviet liquid-fuelled rocket. He died in Kislovodsk in 1933; since 1992 the Russian Academy of Sciences has awarded a prize in his name for outstanding work in rocket and space science.

The coin is the second in the «Space Exploration» series, after the rouble for the 55th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight: issuer catalogue number 10400-01-25002, mintage 50,000. UNC condition: never circulated, no wear, mint lustre retained.

Collectors who focus on a single country will find its other issues in the VPcoins catalogue as well.