A monument to world's first cosmonaut Yury Gagarin will be erected in downtown London in July, Britain's minister for universities and science, David Willetts, said.
Willetts made the statement after signing an agreement with the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos in Moscow on holding the Russian-British Year of Space in 2011.
He said the statue will be built in front of a monument to British explorer and navigator James Cook, joking that the site could serve as a perfect place for space launches.
The statue is to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic first manned space flight made by Soviet cosmonaut Gagarin in 1961.
"The idea of erecting Gagarin's statue in the center of London is just great!" Roscosmos head Anatoly Perminov said.
Perminov said this year the sides plan to hold several events and sign an agreement on joint cooperation in space.
Gagarin died on March 27, 1968, a little under seven years after becoming the first human to fly to space and orbit Earth. His death came during what should have been a routine practice flight in a MiG-15UTI fighter plane, which crashed near the town of Kirzhach, about 100 kilometers outside Moscow.
MOSCOW, February 22 (RIA Novosti)
