Russia and other countries are marking 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, Voice of Russia reports. The mission lasted 1 hour and 48 minutes, heralding the beginning of the space age.
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.
All six crew members of the International Space Station, including Russian Flight Engineers Pavel Vinogradov, Roman Romanenko and Alexander Misurkin, gathered in the Zvezda service module for a congratulatory conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in honor of Cosmonautics Day.
“I want to congratulate the entire crew of the International Space Station on Cosmonautics Day,” President Putin said during the video link-up. “This is more than just a routine congratulation, as it comes from the construction site of Vostochny – Russia’s biggest and busiest cosmodrome,” Putin said.
Vinogradov and Romanenko continued their preparations for an April 19 spacewalk checking their Orlan spacesuits. The duo also removed two handles from a hatch and installed a new docking mechanism on the Pirs docking compartment.
Misurkin spent a few moments checking the Russian experiments Bar and Cascade as well as maintaining Russian segment systems. The Bar experiment tests procedures for locating pressure leaks and the Cascade study investigates cultivation processes of micro-organism, animal and human cells in microgravity.
An official rally is due in Moscow later this Friday, and flowers will be laid at the monument to the world’s first cosmonaut, a Soviet citizen Yuri Gagarin. Youth organization officials will stand close to one another in a Moscow park so that they will form the words WE ARE THE FIRST. The words will be photographed from a space satellite flying over Moscow at the moment. Also, hundreds of air balloons will be launched with ribbons attached to them and containing messages to cosmonauts.
Russkiy Mir Foundation Information Service
