Moscow (AFP)

Russia celebrates Monday with emotion the anniversary of the first flight in space carried out on April 12, 1961 by Yuri Gagarin, who remained a national hero 60 years later and the symbol of Soviet domination in the conquest of space.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will notably travel to Engels, a little over 700 kilometers south-east of Moscow, to the site of the cosmonaut's landing where a memorial has been built in honor of this historic flight.

On April 12, 1961 at 9:07 a.m. Moscow time, Yuri Gagarin began his flight with a playful phrase that has been remembered.

"Here we go!", He said before taking off aboard a Vostok vessel from the then ultra-secret Baikonur cosmodrome in the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan.

Its flight will last 108 minutes, the time to orbit the Earth before landing in the Russian steppe.

The tiny Vostok capsule in which the cosmonaut was rocked under extreme conditions is on display at the Museum of the Conquest of Space in Moscow, for an exhibition titled "First" which will open on Tuesday.

In addition to this capsule, the museum will show many personal effects of Yuri Gagarin dating from his childhood or his space exploits, such as the imposing key used to ignite the engines of his ship or the ejection seat with which he left the capsule seven kilometers away. above ground.

An exhibition mounted with great pomp, testimony to the intact aura of Yuri Gagarin in the eyes of the Russians.

"It is perhaps the only last name that everyone knows in Russia, from four to 80 years and over. Gagarin's feat is sort of what unites Russia," AFP told AFP Vyacheslav Klimentov, deputy director of research at the Museum of the Space Conquest.

- Unifying symbol of the Russians -

In 1957, the Soviet Union had already been the first country to send a satellite into orbit, the famous Sputnik, but Yuri Gagarin's space trip remained in Russia as the symbol of the USSR's domination over the United States in this area.

Yuri Gagarin, who died early in 1968, has become in all the space agencies of the world the face and the symbol of the conquest of space.

Sixty years later, Russia continues to send women and men into space on a regular basis.

A Soyuz rocket, decorated for the occasion with the profile of Gagarin, took off again Friday from Baikonur to the International Space Station (ISS) with two Russians and an American on board.

But Russia's space star has faded.

If Soyuz rockets remain extremely reliable and Russia a key player in the space industry, the country is struggling to innovate and has suffered a series of setbacks in recent years, with several launches missed.

In question, chronic financing problems but also of corruption, in particular on the cosmodrome of Vostotchny (Russian Far East) called to replace Baikonur which Moscow leases today in Kazakhstan.

Last year, Russia lost the monopoly it had for ten years on flights to the ISS, now in competition with the private American company SpaceX.

A new reality that could mean a big shortfall for the Russian space agency Roscosmos, even if its boss Dmitry Rogozin continues to brag about future big projects, from the construction of a lunar station with China to that of a new one. ultra-modern vessel.

© 2021 AFP