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This mosaic at the Yuri Gagarin State Science Research Cosmonauts Training Centre
, also known as Star City, celebrates the Soviet cosmonaut it's now named after.
Gagarin was the third child of parents who laboured on a communal farm. He was selected from a pool of 20 other pilots for the historic mission, which he completed just after his 26th birthday in a Vostok spacecraft. The successful flight made Gagarin a national hero and international celebrity, but his fame was short-lived – he died in a plane crash on a routine exercise just eight years after the space mission.
(Image: Maria Gruzdeva)