Russia marks Cosmonautics Day

Russia marks Cosmonautics Day on Friday to commemorate the first manned space flight made on April 12, 1961 by Soviet cosmonaut Yury Gagarin, who made one complete orbit around the Earth aboard the Vostok spaceship. The mission lasted 1 hour and 48 minutes, heralding the beginning of the space age.

On April 12, 1961, Vostok 8K72K blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome to place into orbit Vostok spacecraft manned by Yury Gagarin.

That flight took just an hour and 48 minutes. Having orbited the Earth, Vostok successfully landed in Saratov Region of Russia. Gagarin ejected himself from the aircraft at the altitude of several kilometers and descended near the place of Vostok’s landing by using the parachute.
The holiday was established in the Soviet Union one year later, on April 9, 1962.
Gagarin's flight was a major success for the Soviet space program, and opened a new era in the history of space exploration.

Gagarin became a national hero of the Soviet Union and eastern bloc and a famous figure around the world. Major newspapers around the globe published his biography and details of his flight. Moscow and other cities in the USSR held parades, the scale of which were second only to WWII Victory Parades. Gagarin was escorted in a long motorcade of high-ranking officials through the streets of Moscow to the Kremlin where, in a lavish ceremony, he was awarded the highest Soviet honour, the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

Even though those years were full of dramatic competitiveness between the two’s space industries, they also symbolically reflected the start of the Russian-US scientific cooperation across-the-board.

Right now, the importance of global space systems can scarcely be overestimated with communication satellites greatly adding to stable TV and radio broadcasts, reliable weather forecasts and high precision navigation systems.
To fulfill a host of scientific experiments in outer space, the International Space Station (ISS) was created in 2000 – a space outpost which has received more than 150 astronauts in the past eight years.

Until today the commemoration ceremony on Cosmonautics Day starts in the city of Korolyov, near Gagarin's statue. Participants then proceed under police escort to Red Square for a visit to Gagarin's grave in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, and continue to Cosmonauts Alley, near the Monument to the Conquerors of Space. Finally, the festivities are concluded with a visit to the Novodevichy Cemetery.

On April 7, 2011 United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring April 12 as the International Day of Human Space Flight.


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