In his lifetime few knew his name: to the Soviet public Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was the anonymous Chief Designer, and he was identified only after his death on 14 January 1966. The Pridnestrovian rouble with his portrait came out on 15 December 2017, the year of his 110th birth anniversary.

Korolev’s portrait fills the centre of the reverse, with a space rocket against the stars to the right. Above runs «S.P. KOROLYOV», below the years of his life «1907-1966». The obverse shows the state arms of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, the bank’s name, the date «2017» and the denomination «1 RUBL».

Korolev was born in Zhytomyr on 12 January 1907 (30 December 1906, Old Style). Arrested in 1938 and sent to Kolyma, he nevertheless returned to rocketry: under his direction the R-7, the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile, was built, and the first artificial Earth satellite was launched on 4 October 1957, followed by Yuri Gagarin’s spacecraft on 12 April 1961.

The coin is the fifth in the «Space Exploration» series and the third space rouble of 2017, after those for Tsiolkovsky and the first satellite. Issuer catalogue number 10400-01-25005, mintage 50,000.

UNC condition: never circulated, no wear, mint lustre retained. Paired with the satellite rouble, it tells the story of the 1957 launch and of the man behind it.

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