Thirty-Five Years Without Gagarin

A detachment of Russian cosmonauts laid flowers to the stele on the place of death of the planet's first cosmonaut, Yury Gagarin, and his flying coach Vladimir Seryogin. The spot is located near the village of Novosyolovo, Vladimir Region, 200 kilometres east of Moscow.

"On the day of the 35th anniversary of the crash, which took place on March 27, 1968, a bus full of young cosmonauts preparing to fly to the International Space Station arrived at the place of the crash of the MiG-15, the jet on which Yury Gagarin and Vladimir Seryogin crashed during a training flight," officials in the Pilot Training Center said. "The group was headed by Commander of the detachment Valery Korzun." Cosmonauts of the first (Gagarin's) draft, Alexei Leonov and Viktor Gorbatko, and officials from the Russian Aerospace Agency, the Air Forces and several space enterprises laid flowers at the spot and held an improvised rally in front of local residents.