Monument dedicated to the flight of the first man into space
Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin (1934-1968) was born near the village of Novoselovo, Kirzhachsky district, Vladimir region, USSR). He was a pilot-cosmonaut of the USSR, Hero of the Soviet Union, knight of the highest insignia of a number of states, honorary citizen of many Russian and foreign cities. Colonel of the USSR Air Force (1963), military pilot of the 1st class, Honored Master of Sports of the USSR (1961), member of the Komsomol Central Committee, deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 7th and 8th convocations. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person in world history to fly into outer space. The Vostok launch vehicle with the Vostok-1 spacecraft carrying Gagarin was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome, located in the Kyzylorda region of Kazakhstan. After 108 minutes of flight Gagarin successfully landed in the Saratov region, near Engels. April 12, 1961, the day of Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space, was declared a holiday – Cosmonautics Day. The first space flight aroused great interest all over the world, and Yuri Gagarin himself turned into a world celebrity. At the invitation of foreign governments and public organizations, he visited about 30 countries. In the following years Gagarin conducted a lot of social and political work, graduated from the Air Force Engineering Academy named after Professor N.E. Zhukovsky, worked at the Cosmonaut Training Center and was preparing for a new flight into space. On March 27, 1968, Yuri Gagarin died in an aviation accident near the village of Novoselovo, Kirzhachsky district, Vladimir region, while performing a training flight on a MiG-15UTI aircraft under the guidance of an experienced instructor V.S. Seregin. The causes and circumstances of the crash remain unclear to this day. In connection with Gagarin’s death, a national mourning was declared in the Soviet Union (for the first time in the history of the USSR in memory of a person who was not the head of state). In honor of the first cosmonaut of the Earth, a number of settlements were renamed (including his hometown – Gzhatsk), streets and avenues were named. Many monuments to Gagarin have been erected in different cities of the world. One of them is located in the city of Moscow at 3A Sayanskaya Street on the territory of GBOU School № 1502 and represents the figure of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, as if hovering, arms outstretched, against the background of the radiance of a huge star. The sculptural composition is installed on the basis of a half-meter height. The base is made of red brick and lined with decorative terracotta tiles on top.
Address: Moscow, Sayanskaya str., d 3A
