"We all wanted to be Gagarins": cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin visited the National Centre RUSSIA

The National Centre RUSSIA congratulates everyone on Aviation and Cosmonautics Day. Cosmonaut, Hero of Russia, and President of the "Cosmonautics and Aviation" Centre at VDNH Fyodor Yurchikhin visited the National Centre RUSSIA. He spoke about how Yuri Gagarin's first spaceflight inspired him to choose this challenging profession.

"For as long as I can remember, since early childhood, the name Gagarin was something sacred to me. Back then, when someone excelled in something, in sports or any other field, adults would say 'Gagarin' about them. As kids, we understood that it meant 'champion', and we wanted to become 'Gagarins' too. Only closer to school did I begin to realize that Gagarin was not a title, but a person," Fyodor Yurchikhin shared.

He noted that as children, he and his friends knew the names of all cosmonauts in the order in which they had flown into space.

On 1 September 1966, when Fyodor Yurchikhin started first grade, the teacher asked each student what they wanted to become. He said he dreamed of becoming a cosmonaut. After graduating from secondary school in 1976, he enrolled at the Moscow Aviation Institute named after S. Ordzhonikidze, which he completed in 1983 with a degree in "Amphibious Aircraft." He became a cosmonaut after completing several stages of training, the first of which was being selected as a test cosmonaut candidate for the RSC Energia cosmonaut corps. He took part in the "Mir–Shuttle" and "Mir–NASA" programs.

"Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, in every country he visited, carried with dignity the notion of being a citizen of his Motherland. He embodied a person for whom civil and professional heroism were of equal importance," Fyodor Yurchikhin emphasized.

Fyodor Yurchikhin completed 5 spaceflights and 9 spacewalks.