MOSCOW: Yuri Gagarin, feted as a Soviet national hero for being the first man in space, was killed in a plane crash 50 years ago but the details of his death remain shrouded in mystery. Sergei Kravchinsky, 74, remembers learning of Gagarin’s death when he was a young space engineer and had just finished a gymnastics class. When they heard the investigation commission give its conclusions, they were perplexed. In 2011, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s historic 1961 flight into space, the Kremlin released some fresh information on his death. He believes that the secrecy around Gagarin’s death was retained to hide “the flaws in the organisation and the functioning of the Soviet space sector,” a symbol of the USSR’s might.

Source: New Strait Times March 27, 2018 04:41 UTC