Overview
- The video message, released Sunday by Roscosmos, featured Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergey Mikayev and Andrey Fedyaev congratulating Russians on the 65th anniversary of Yury Gagarin’s 1961 orbit.
- Russia’s first national Space Week ran April 6–12 after a December 29, 2025 presidential decree created the annual event with Roscosmos as organizer and TASS as media sponsor.
- Current station operations continue with Russia’s Nikolay Chub and Alexander Grebenkin and Americans Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps on the ISS, while China’s Tiangong hosts Tang Shengjie and Jiang Xinlin.
- Since the dawn of human spaceflight, 615 people from 40 countries have made orbital trips, including 76 women, with the United States at 364, the Soviet Union/Russia at 135 and China at 20.
- April 12 doubles as Russia’s Cosmonautics Day, set in 1962 by the USSR Supreme Soviet, and the UN’s International Day of Human Space Flight declared in 2011.