FILE - In this Tuesday, July 11, 1961 file photo, Major Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut, holds the gold medal of the British Interplanetary Society after it was awarded to him after his press conference at the Soviet exhibition in Earls Court, London. The successful one-orbit flight on April 12, 1961 made the 27-year-old Gagarin a national hero and cemented Soviet supremacy in space until the United States put a man on the moon more than eight years later. (AP Photo/File)