Russian President Dmitry Medvedev awards a medal "for services to the Fatherland" to engineer Leonid Gusyev at an awards ceremony devoted to achievements in the space programme in Moscow's Kremlin April 12, 2011. Russia on Tuesday celebrated the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic first space flight.[Photo/Agencies]

MOSCOW -- Russia must preserve its pre-eminence in space, President Dmitry Medvedev declared Tuesday on the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

The statement followed warnings by another cosmonaut that Russia risks losing its edge in space research by relying solely on Soviet-era achievements and doing little to develop new space technologies.

Gagarin's 108-minute mission on April 12, 1961, remains a source of great national pride, and Russia marked the day with fanfarens in 1982 and 1984 and became the first woman to make a spacewalk, harshly criticized the Kremlin for paying little attention to space research after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

"There's nothing new to be proud of in the last 20 years," said Savitskaya, a member of Russian parliament from the Communist Party.

Russia has used the Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, whose designs date back to the 1960s, to send an increasing number of crew and cargo to the International Space Station. Russia's importance will grow even more after the US space shuttle Atlantis closes out the US program this summer, leaving the Russian spacecraft as the only link to the station.

But Savitskaya and some other cosmonauts have warned that Russia has done little to build a replacement to the Soyuz and could quickly fall behind America after it builds a new-generation spaceship.

Boris Chertok, the former deputy to Sergei Korolyov, the father of the Soviet space program, says it has become increasingly difficult for Russia's space industries to hire new personnel.

"Salaries in space industries are much lower than average salaries again.

Gagarin's own death in a training jet crash on March 27, 1968, is shrouded in conspiracy theories to this day. Shatalov, who had planned to follow Gagarin on another training flight that day, told the AP that the most likely reason for Gagarin's crash was a sonic wave from another military jet flying too close.