FORMER cosmonaut Colonel Alexander Volkov kept his feet firmly on the ground yesterday and still made a little bit of history.

He became the first man who has been in space to view the stars from a 19th Century astronomical observatory in York.

The 56-year-old is a veteran of several space missions, including flights on the Salyut and Mir space stations.

He was in York with another mainstay of the Russian space programme, Dr Alexander Martynov, who was head of ballistics at mission control, near Moscow.

Col Volkov is also a former team commander at the Russian Training Centre for Cosmonauts.

Dr Martynov, 59, designed re-entry modules to provide soft landings.

The two men were in York to talk to young people at York University's Institute of Physics Christmas lecture about the possibility of a manned mission to Mars.

But before the lecture, they visited the observatory, built in the city's Museum Gardens in 1833 by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society.

The curator of astronomy with York Museum's Trust, Martin Lunn, said: "We are very honoured to welcome two eminent Russian cosmonauts to the York Observatory.

"It is not every day that one gets the opportunity to meet someone that has been into space.

"It is also a first for the observatory - as far as I'm aware, no one who has been into space has ever visited it before."