1961: Soviets win space race

Published: Apr 12, 2006
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Eighty-six cities around the globe are scheduled to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's historic spaceflight today. The event, entitled Yuri’s Night, is a grassroots world party for space that has been held annually since 2001.

In addition to Gagarin’s flight, the event also commemorates the first launch of the space shuttle, which took place 20 years to the day after Yuri orbited the planet. That historic space shuttle launch, of the orbiter Columbia on April 12, 1981, was flown by John Young and Robert Crippen Jr. Young and Crippen are expected at the Johnson Space Center this morning for an event with Senator Hutchison of Texas.

Yuri’s Night was co-founded by Loretta Hidalgo, currently a contractor at NASA headquarters, and George Whitesides, Executive Director of the National Space Society. The couple, who are now slated to ride as the first honeymoon couple on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, began the event with fellow Space Generation member Trish Garner as a way to bring people together and expand the global space community.continue..