On March 9, web surfers will be able to take part in a special stage of the Gagarin Cup, which is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight, Voice of Russia reports. The Internet education project, which will be all about Russian language, specifically recalls that Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s “Up We Go” became the first words uttered in outer space.
The Wednesday event is due to kick off at 9:07 a.m. Moscow time in a show of tribute to Gagarin’s historic flight, which took place on April 12, 1961. Participating in the project will be, among others, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, organizers said.
Participants are welcome to visit www.igraslov.com, where they should log in and then compile a Russian word from a suggested set of letters scattered across a virtual board. The word’s grammar will then be tested with the help of the National Corpus of Russian Language, a unique web portal that includes more than 176 million words.
Participants will be able to learn many interesting facts related to Gagarin’s flight, organizers said, specifically citing details of a political and public uproar in the United States provoked by this breaking news. Small surprise, given that the news meant that the Soviets finally prevailed over the Americans in a space race at the time.
Ivan Klimenko, Gagarin Cup director general, separately pointed to the fact that a record, set by Yuri Gagarin, is yet to be broken. "The International Aviation Federation registered a first world space record in May 1961," Klimenko says. "Gagarin's one-seat spacecraft, Vostok 1, circled Earth at a speed of 28,260 kilometers per hour. The flight lasted 108 minutes. At the highest point, Gagarin was about 327 kilometers above Earth, a world record that was never broken," Klimenko concludes.
Thousands of people from Russia and beyond have already taken part in twelve stages of the Gagarin Cup, which was earlier initiated by the Russian Union of Journalists, the International Confederation of Journalist Unions and the administration of Russia’s Star City space training center. Among the winners were Natalia Kovtun form Stockholm, Svetlana Roberts from Manchester and Vadim Zakharov from Kiev.
The March 9 stage coincides with Yuri Gagarin’s 77th birth anniversary and will see prizewinners getting special certificates of honor.
Russkiy Mir Foundation Information Service
