{"id":118267,"date":"2021-04-13T08:42:49","date_gmt":"2021-04-13T00:42:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=118267"},"modified":"2021-04-13T08:43:22","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T00:43:22","slug":"russians-celebrate-60-years-since-historic-gagarin-spaceflight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=118267","title":{"rendered":"Russians celebrate 60 years since historic Gagarin spaceflight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A 60m tall effigy of first USSR cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin created by Italian graffiti artist IJorit Agoch in Odintsovo, Moscow<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

MOSCOW, April 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Russia on Monday celebrated the 60th anniversary of the legendary flight that made Yuri Gagarin the first man in space, a major source of national pride for millions of his countrymen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia\u2019s space industry has struggled in recent years and been hit by a series of mishaps, but the sending of the first human into space on April 12, 1961 remains a crowning achievement of the Soviet space programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Vladimir Putin travelled to the southern city of Engels on the banks of the Volga River, to the site of the cosmonaut\u2019s landing where a memorial stands to honour the historic flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day of Gagarin\u2019s flight is celebrated every year in Russia as Cosmonautics Day, and this year authorities are pulling out all the stops to mark the 60th anniversary, with museum exhibitions, round-the-clock television coverage and events across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Moscow commuters, Monday morning started with a broadcast on the Metro of the original report by state news agency TASS about the launch, followed by Gagarin\u2019s legendary words \u2014 \u201cPoekhali!\u201d (Let\u2019s go) \u2014 as his Vostok spacecraft lifted off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a message from the International Space Station, the four Russian cosmonauts on board saluted \u201call earthlings\u201d and hailed their compatriot\u2019s accomplishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGagarin\u2019s legendary 108-minute flight became an example of heroism for his successors, including us,\u201d said cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vostok took off carrying the 27-year-old Gagarin from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The flight lasted just 108 minutes, the time it took to complete one loop around the Earth, before returning to home soil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The now-rusty Vostok capsule is on display at Moscow\u2019s Museum of Cosmonautics where a new exhibition dedicated to Gagarin is set to open on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visitors will be shown documents, photos and personal belongings, some dating back to Gagarin\u2019s childhood and school years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is probably the only surname that everyone knows, from four-year-old children to people over 80,\u201d Vyacheslav Klimentov, a historian and the museum\u2019s deputy director of research, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGagarin\u2019s feat\u2026 bonds all Russians together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft honouring the anniversary of Gagarin\u2019s flight blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome to deliver two Russians and a US astronaut to the ISS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gagarin\u2019s flight remains a symbol of the country\u2019s dominance in space during the Soviet era. Four years before Gagarin, the USSR had become the first country to send a satellite into orbit, called Sputnik.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the anniversary also comes at a difficult time for Russia\u2019s space industry, which has suffered a number of setbacks in recent years, from corruption scandals to lost spacecraft to an aborted take-off during a manned mission in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia\u2019s ageing Soyuz rockets are reliable and allow Moscow to remain relevant in the modern space industry, but the country is struggling to innovate and keep up with other key players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a major blow, Russia last year lost its monopoly for manned ISS launches after reusable rockets from Elon Musk\u2019s Space X, carrying NASA astronauts, successfully docked at the space station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a video message released on Monday, the head of Russia\u2019s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, stressed that the USSR sent a man into space despite having lost \u201ccolossal resources\u201d during World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rogozin has set a series of ambitious goals for Roscosmos in recent years, despite funding cuts to the space programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said Monday that Russia was \u201con the cusp of very important changes\u201d that will see next-generation spacecraft and lunar missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe believe in our space, in Russian space,\u201d he said. — NNN-AGENCIES
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MOSCOW, April 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Russia on Monday celebrated the 60th anniversary of the legendary flight that made Yuri Gagarin the first man in space, a major source of national pride for millions of his countrymen. Russia\u2019s space industry has struggled in recent years and been hit by a series of mishaps, but the sending […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":118268,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[209],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118267"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/118268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}