display
Moscow (dpa) - 60 years after the first human flight into space, the proud space nation Russia is celebrating the hero Yuri Gagarin and the historical event.
Four cosmonauts on the space station ISS reminded their compatriots of Gagarin's 108-minute flight on April 12, 1961 in a video greeting on Monday. the history of manned space travel, ”said cosmonaut Sergei Kud-Swertschkow.
April 12th is celebrated as Space Day in Russia, and in 2011 the United Nations declared it International Human Space Day.
Russia is celebrating the 60th anniversary with exhibitions and the opening of a park named after Gagarin near the city of Engels in the Saratov region on the Volga.
The cosmonaut landed there after his return from space.
display
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the landing site and, together with several cosmonauts, laid flowers on a Gagarin monument.
The future of Russian space travel should also be discussed.
Like the other space nations USA or China, Roskosmos has ambitious plans and wants to send cosmonauts to the moon in about ten years - and thus build on past successes such as Gagarin's space flight.
The space agency Roskosmos published historical recordings of the flight on its website and traced Gagarin's trajectory.
The newspaper "Izvestia" reprinted a 60-year-old edition in which the journey of the first man into space was celebrated as the victory of the communist Soviet Union in the battle of the systems in the Cold War.
Yuri Gagarin would be 87 years old today.
He died at the age of 34 on March 27, 1968 when a fighter plane crashed near Moscow.
Many legends surround his death to this day, because the circumstances of the accident remained secret for a long time.
Gagarin's urn was buried in the Kremlin wall during a state ceremony.
Roscosmos boss Dmitri Rogozin laid flowers there with a delegation on Monday.
He spoke of a national holiday for Russia.
Space travel still has a high priority in this gigantic empire.
display
From Moscow's point of view, the US sanctions policy against Russia is therefore not only annoying, but also a hindrance to business.
The rocket engine manufacturer NPO Energomasch has lost a third of its total sales because the US refused to buy Russian products, said the vice-general director of Roscosmos, Maxim Ovchinnikow, who is responsible for finances.
It is about sums of the equivalent of up to 141 million euros.
For the NPO Energomasch this is a considerable economic loss.
The US had imposed sanctions on Russia in connection with the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
In addition, according to earlier information, the US Department of Defense no longer wants to use satellites that were brought into space with Russian missiles.
Russia and the USA are working closely together on the ISS, for example.
For a long time, space travel was considered to be the last bastion in which cooperation between the two countries still worked well despite all the political tensions.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210412-99-176395 / 2
display
New portal with historical photos and documents about the first cosmonauts
United Nations April 12th