The Space Foundation, an American non-profit organisation founded in 1983, has renamed its Yuri's Night fundraiser, named in honour of the first man to travel into space, celebrated Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, "
in light of current world events".
The message was later deleted, but the official name of the event was changed to "A Celebration of Space: Discover What's Next".
The Space Symposium takes place every spring at the Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs (USA). This year the event, which includes various seminars, lectures, forums, auctions, and other activities, is expected to take place from 4 to 7 April.
So far, only one Yuri's Night event has been renamed. The event usually takes place every year in hundreds of locations all around the world. It's yet unknown how many of these events will take place this year and whether any of them will change their name in addition to the one that hosts the Space Symposium.
The decision has shocked not only people from the space industry, but also ordinary users, who have called the action "really dumb".
The NASA Watch account on Twitter called it a "bad idea", with users commenting that it's "too bad the @SpaceFoundation's racial and ethnic biases lead it to deny the story".
"I wonder how this idea would poll among humans who have seen the Earth from orbit", another noted.
Aside from the Space Foundation event, controversy over the "cancellation" of Yuri Gagarin also erupted in Luxemburg's Mondorf-les-Bains, where
a monument to him was covered up with fabric. According to the city's mayor, he was contacted by a group of people who demanded the removal of the bust. He justified the decision to hide the monument so as to "end the discussions and protect the bust from potential vandalism".
The mayor also said that there is "little use" in removing the memorial and it would not happen in the future. He noted that "it is clear that the invasion cannot be supported, but that Yuri Gagarin is surely not to blame for it, nor is Russian art".