Cosmonautics Day marks pioneering spaceflights

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2 May 2007 News

The 46th anniversary of the first human spaceflight was celebrated as Cosmonautics Day, on 12 April. This year also marks the 50th anniversary since the first artificial satellite was put into geocentric orbit.

On 12 April, 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the earth. Gagarin's spacecraft, Vostok 1, circled the planet at a speed of 27 400 km/h. At the highest point, Gagarin was about 327 kilometres above ground. Born in 1934, Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin, who served as a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Force, is remembered as Columbus of the Cosmos for pioneering manned exploration of outer space.

In 1957, 50 years ago, Sputnik 1 was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome marking an historic technological leap as the first man-made object to enter earth orbit, ushering in the Space Age - and triggering an international space race. Equipped with two radio transmitters, the satellite emitted radio signals at 20 and 40 MHz and its intermittent 'beeps' were picked up by scientists and radio operators around the world. From a scientific angle, the satellite helped identify the density of high atmospheric layers and provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Sputnik 1 flew at 29 000 km/h, orbiting the globe every 96 minutes and covered about 60 million kilometres before burning out on re-entering earth's atmosphere.

On Cosmonautics Day, a videoconference hook-up was held between ITU headquarters in Geneva and the A.S. Popov Museum of Communication in St Petersburg, Russia. The minister of the Russian Federation for Information Technologies and Communications and the ITU secretary-general exchanged views on the revolutionary developments heralded by those early spaceflights.

The St Petersburg Museum was named after Alexander Stepanovich Popov who in the 1890s was the first to demonstrate the practical application of electro- magnetic waves.

The Russian Federation announced that by 2015 as many as 15 spacecraft will be launched to establish a network of communication and broadcasting satellites and augment the current strength of 14 orbital satellites designated for civilian use.

www.itu.net

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Cosmonautics Day marks pioneering spaceflights

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