Statue of Russian pilot and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin is shown full-length, in cosmonaut’s uniform without helmet. Gagarin holds up his right hand in a waving gesture, his left arm is outstretched to his side. He is facing straight ahead with his left leg placed slightly in front, as if about to take a step forward. The figure stands on top of a globe with a band circling a section of its sphere; this represents the trajectory of Gagarin’s 90-minute orbit around the earth. At the highest-point of the band, just behind the figure of Gagarin, is a four-pointed star.

The statue is an exhibition copy of a work originally commissioned by the Lubertsy Vocational School no.10 in l984 to mark Gagarin’s 50th birthday. Lubertsy is a small town northwest of Moscow and the Vocational School no. 10 is a technical college where boys from poor families could learn to work as foundry men while completing their academic studies. Gagarin himself attended the school between 1949 and 1951. The statue was paid for by donations from the town of Lubertsy and the school’s pupils. They commissioned the sculptor Anatoly Novikov, one of the principal sculptors of the Stalingrad Memorial, now the Volgograd Memorial, to produce the work.

In order to enable the statue to come to England, and to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the first manned space flight in 2011, the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) made an exhibition copy of the work. Moulds were taken from the original work in September 2010 and a new statue was manufactured. Before moving to its current location outside the Royal Observatory, the statue previously stood in front of the British Council’s Headquarters on Pall Mall.