MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/. The cooperation between Russia and the United States in space will eventually prevail, special envoy of the Russian president and chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev said.
"NASA celebrating Gagarin. Cooperation will prevail," he wrote on the X social network, responding to NASA’s publication on the occasion of the World Aviation and Cosmonautics Day, marked on April 12.
Russia celebrates April 12 as Cosmonautics Day, established under a decree by the USSR Supreme Soviet (the Soviet Union’s national legislature) of April 9, 1962 in honor of the world’s first space flight by a Soviet citizen. The idea of introducing this date to the calendar of the nation’s memorable events was proposed by the Soviet Union’s second cosmonaut to go on a space mission, German Titov.
April 12 is also the International Day of Human Space Flight (declared by the UN General Assembly session on April 7, 2011 in honor of the beginning of humanity’s space era).
On April 12, 1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yury Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth. His spacecraft Vostok blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome to travel around the globe once. Gagarin successfully landed in Russia’s Saratov Region. His flight lasted 108 minutes. At the moment of blastoff Gagarin dropped a remark that instantly went down in history: "Off we go!" The space flight earned him the title of The Hero of the Soviet Union.