Yuri Gagarin Coin

On 5 November 1957, Gagarin was commissioned a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Forces having accumulated 166 hours and 47 minutes of flight time. He graduated from flight school the next day and was posted to the Luostari Air Base close to the Norwegian border in Murmansk Oblast for a two-year assignment with the Northern Fleet. On 7 July 1959, he was rated Military Pilot 3rd Class. After expressing interest in space exploration following the launch of Luna 3 on 6 October 1959, his recommendation to the Soviet space programme was endorsed and forward by Lieutenant Colonel Babushkin. By this point, he had accumulated 265 hours of flight time. Gagarin was promoted to the rank of senior lieutenant on 6 November 1959, three weeks after he was interviewed by a medical commission for qualification to the space programme.


As time passed, the region would have cooled down considerably and contracted--thus pulling away from its surroundings and forming fractures akin to the cracks that form in mud as it becomes dry--but on a considerably larger scale. For this reason, astronomers have for years considered the possibility that hydrocarbon lakes and seas might exist on the surface of this misty moisty moon. The data derived from Cassini/Huygens validated this prediction. During its long and productive mission, now over, Cassini revealed that almost 2% of Titan's entire bizarre surface is coated wth gasoline-like liquids. "For the smaller craters, it's like if you're filling a bucket, eventually your bucket gets full, but if you keep pouring cups of water into the bucket, you can't tell how many cups of water beyond full you've gone. Looking at the larger craters at the subsurface might give us insight, because that 'bucket' isn't full yet," Dr. Soderblom added.