MOSCOW, April 12 (RIA Novosti) - President Vladimir Putin has congratulated space and missile industry workers on their professional holiday - Cosmonautics Day, the presidential press service said Saturday.
"Thanks to strenuous creative labor of scientists, designers, and other specialists... the domestic space industry has firmly taken leading positions, and its achievements have found wide use in different spheres of economics," Putin's message said.
Russia celebrates Cosmonautics Day on April 12 in honor of the historic first manned space flight made by Soviet cosmonaut Yury Gagarin in 1961.
