Mussabayev of KazKosmos Space Agency against declaring October 2 the Day of Cosmonautics in Kazakhstan

Talgat Mussabayev, Head of KazKosmos National Space Agency, does not support the idea of declaring October 2 the day of Kazakhstan’s cosmonautics. Last week Senator Gani Kassymov suggested declaring October 2 a national holiday to celebrate Kazakhstan’s cosmonautics: October 2, 1991 the first Kazakhstan’s cosmonaut Tokhtar Aubakirov was launched to space. “The whole world celebrates the Cosmonautics day [renamed by the UN to the International Day of Human Space Flight] April 12 to commemorate the first flight of Yuri Gagrin to space in 1961. Why should Kazakhstan be different?”, Mussabayev told journalists September 19. Talgat Mussabayev is a Kazakh test pilot and former cosmonaut who flew on three spaceflights. His first two spaceflights were long-duration stays aboard the Russian space station Mir. His third spaceflight was a short duration visiting mission to the International Space Station, which also carried the first paying space tourist Dennis Tito.