Cosmonautics Day

The achievement of Gagarin’s historic flight became an annual celebration in the Soviet Union, known as “Cosmonautics Day”. Though this continued in the modern Russia following the collapse of the communist system, it was with perhaps less enthusiasm. However, with the growth of the internet and social media, international events under the banner “Yuri’s Night” are now being celebrated across the world, from small gatherings to larger official functions. For the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight, this took on even more importance, not only for citizens in general, but for those directly associated with carrying his memory into space on each flight.

It has been a tradition of cosmonaut mission commanders, whether under the Soviet or Russian banner, to use a personal radio call sign for communication identification. As part of the celebrations of the previous 50 years of sending humans into space came the decision to use the call sign “Gagarin” for Soyuz TMA-21 (ISS Expedition 28) in April 2011. In recognition of both the American and Russian pioneers of space flight, the names of both the first Soviet Union cosmonaut (Yuri Gagarin) and the first American astronaut (Alan B. Shepard) in space were included in the design of the mission emblem. Radio call signs and mission emblems have become recognized as the flight crews’ personal input into each highly technical and scientific mission into space, humanizing the nuts and bolts of the hardware in which the crew members fly and continuing a long tradition of emblazoning aircraft with nose art or naming oceangoing vessels with a personal identity.

Behind the headlines, the press kits, news releases, and postflight debriefings are personal stories of triumph and achievement and, at times, of tragedy and

disappointment. Of course the science of flying into space, like most technology, is prone to failure and unforgiving disaster, but when things work as designed the results can be both spectacular and awe inspiring. When reading the accounts of each mission into space, the fine line between success and failure each crew faces through every second of the mission should be remembered. Whether these mis­sions last a few minutes or hours, days, or months, the ever present threat of disaster and failure remains. Space is an unforgiving environment. No matter how many times humans venture there, neither the depth of training nor experience can totally eliminate the potential for system failure and risk to the health and safety of the crew. This is a specter constantly riding with every crew on each mission, but the same experience and frequency of exploring space does reduce such risks in that challenging environment. The true legacy of all previous flights into space is that they add to the ever expanding database of knowledge which allows future missions to push farther and deeper in space than ever before and to do so with added safety and with more confidence.

As we stand at the beginning of the second half of the initial hundred years of human space exploration, it is appropriate to review what has been achieved and what lessons have been learned. All this experience, both good and bad, can then be applied to current operations and future plans. How those plans turn out in reahty will be the responsibility of future generations, all of whom will follow in the trail of Yuri Gagarin. Even though his total space flight experience was just 108 minutes, he pioneered the journey from Earth to space. Yuri Gagarin will forever remain in the annals of human exploration as the first to leave the Earth, blazing a trail in the conquest for space for others to follow.