NEW YORK, April 12. /TASS/. NASA has taken the opportunity of the International Day of Human Spaceflight on Tuesday to commemorate Yuri Gagarin’s role in space exploration.

"Today is the International Day of Human Space Flight—marking Yuri Gagarin's 1961 first flight, and the first Space Shuttle launch in 1981," the agency said on Twitter.

Russia marks April 12 as Cosmonautics Day. The holiday was established on April 9, 1962 to commemorate the world’s first manned spaceflight by a Soviet national. Also, April 12 is the International Day of Human Space Flight, which was proclaimed by the UN on April 7, 2011 to mark the beginning of mankind’s space era.