The Government of Russia has handed in 10 awards for space exploration and conferred the rank of the Winner of Yury Gagarin State Award in Space Exploration on 50 experts of the space-rocket industry.

As it is noted, the Gagarin State Awards in Space Exploration have been granted every five years since 2011. They are given to a competitor or a group of competitors consisting of up to five people. According to the resolution of 2011, the amount of the state award makes 1 million rubles.

      

      The Gagarin Awards have been conferred on Ravil Akhmetov, the First Deputy CEO and the chief designer of the Progress space-rocket center, Vladimir Pashistov, the Deputy CEO on Production of the space-rocket center, Nikolay Ivanov, the head of department of the N. A. Semikhatov Scientific and Production Association of Automatic Equipment, and others.

      

      They got the awards for development, tests and operation of the carrier rocket Soyus-2.