THE 1999 cosmonauts' space tour on June 9 at Blackburn Rovers stadium was a huge success. Meeting a cosmonaut is very rare.

The cosmonauts from Russia were talking to a group of children assembled at Ewood Park. There were 80 year two to year six children from our school, along with year seven pupils from Queen's Park High School, Blackburn, and Dr Alexandre Martynov and Colonel Alexandre Volkov gave the hour-long presentation.

Steve Bennett's prototype rocket was on show, along with space food from a mission conducted 17 years ago. A video from the space station, Mir, was shown and we also heard about the Soyuz rocket.

Afterwards, we were allowed in the wooden rocket, which had buttons and electronics and got the cosmonauts' autographs and others too.

On behalf of all the children from Lower Darwen, we would like to thank Blackburn Rovers and the Chamber of Commerce for putting on this event, and especially to Mr Panaro for helping fund our visit.

ANTHONY PLUMMER, DANIEL SMITH, BRYN BUCK and NEIL BILLINGTON, Lower Darwen Primary School, Blackburn.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.