During a visit to Sofia Tech Park Monday, Bulgarian engineering physicist Petko Dinev, who contributed to NASA’s Artemis missions, expressed pride in his work and optimism about Bulgaria’s role in space technology saying his "biggest dream" is to see a Moon landing captured with his company’s cameras.

"My biggest dream is for us to see a Moon landing with our cameras," he said as he visited Sofia Tech Park together with caretaker Foreign Minister Nadezhda Neynsky during a visit to Bulgaria April 27 and 28 on the Minister's invitation,  News.Az reports, citing BTA.bg.

Dinev is the founder of the high-tech company ImperX, whose developments in optical and digital imaging technologies are used in industry, security, and space technologies, including NASA’s Artemis missions.

"I love Bulgaria, I love being here - after all, it is my home," the Bulgarian scientist told journalists. He spends about five months a year in Bulgaria, since his company has offices in Sofia and Plovdiv.

Regarding the Artemis II mission, which successfully completed the first human journey to the Moon and back in more than half a century, the Bulgarian scientist said he felt proud to be part of the programme. "Our cameras were on the launch vehicle, and the clips shown on television were exactly from our cameras," Dinev said.

"This is perhaps the only mission that had 24-hour live broadcasting," he added, commenting on conspiracy theories claiming it was filmed in Hollywood. "This is the Cape Canaveral mission, not Hollywood - people are simply confusing the state," Dinev joked. He confirmed that everything shown live was real. "There were over 10,000 photographs taken by the astronauts themselves. They will be analyzed and used as the basis for determining the exact landing site for Artemis 5 in 2028," the physicist said.

He highlighted Bulgaria’s partnership with NASA since 2020 and expressed hope that Bulgaria would once again rank among the nations engaged in high-tech space exploration, as it once did. "The level of knowledge of Bulgarian scientists in this field is very high. They cooperate with many universities in Europe and the US," he added.

Dinev said that when he first went to the US, he realized that he knew absolutely nothing about electronics, a field in which he had thought he was very good at, highlighting that Bulgarian scientists nowadays write academic papers at a world-class level.

News.Az 

By Leyla Şirinova