Yuri Gagarin: the first human in space

On 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth, aboard Vostok 1 — the 108 minutes that opened the way into space for humankind.

The 108 minutes that changed the world

On 12 April 1961, at 9:07 Moscow time, a Vostok rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. At its top sat the Vostok 1 spacecraft, and inside it the 27-year-old pilot Yuri Gagarin. Moments before launch he spoke the word that became famous: "Poyekhali!" — "Let's go!"

The flight lasted 108 minutes — about an hour and forty-eight minutes — and completed one full orbit of the Earth. The craft climbed to an altitude of more than 300 kilometres. For the first time in history, a human being had reached space and circled the planet.

Who was Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was born on 9 March 1934 in the village of Klushino, near Gzhatsk (today the town of Gagarin) in the Smolensk region, into an ordinary peasant family. His childhood fell during the war: the village was occupied by German troops, the family was driven from their home, and his older brother and sister were taken to Germany for forced labour.

After the war Gagarin trained as a foundryman at a trade school, then studied at an industrial technical college in Saratov. It was there that he first took to the air, at a local flying club. Aviation captured him, and he entered the military flying school in Orenburg, graduating in 1957. He served for several years as a military pilot in the north.

How he was chosen

In 1960 Gagarin was enrolled in the first group of Soviet cosmonauts. Candidates were selected very strictly: they needed robust health, experience flying jets, a calm temperament and — because of the cramped Vostok cabin — a short stature (Gagarin's was about 1.6 metres).

Out of the top six, Gagarin was chosen for the first flight. It was not only his training that mattered, but his composure, charm and ease under pressure. His backup was Gherman Titov, who would fly into space a few months later.

What really happened during the flight

Gagarin did not fly the craft by hand — the flight was fully automated. Engineers were not certain how a person would feel in weightlessness, so the manual controls were locked. A code to unlock them in an emergency was sealed in an envelope on board.

Gagarin's call sign was "Kedr" ("Cedar"). He kept in contact with the ground, made observations and notes, and tried eating and drinking in weightlessness. The equipment worked as planned, with no serious failures.

The return: ejection and a field near Saratov

The descent was unusual. The Vostok descent module landed too hard for a human, so at an altitude of about 7 kilometres Gagarin ejected and came down by his own parachute, separately from the craft.

He landed at about 10:55 in the morning in a field near the village of Smelovka in the Saratov region, not far from the Volga. The first to meet him were a local woman and her granddaughter, who stared in astonishment at the man in an orange spacesuit who had come down from the sky.

A curious detail: the fact that the cosmonaut landed separately from his craft was kept secret for a long time. Under the rules of the day, to count as an official world record the pilot had to land together with the vehicle — so the details of the descent were not revealed.

Worldwide fame

The flight instantly made Gagarin one of the most famous people on the planet. He was greeted at huge rallies in Moscow, travelled to dozens of countries as a goodwill ambassador, and met leaders and royalty. A simple village boy had become a living symbol of humanity's breakthrough into space.

His death in 1968

On 27 March 1968 Yuri Gagarin was killed during a training flight in a MiG-15 jet, together with his instructor Vladimir Seryogin, near Kirzhach. He was 34. The exact cause of the crash was investigated for years; several theories exist, and there is still no single, final answer.

Why it matters

Gagarin's flight is one of the defining moments of the 20th century and the peak of the Soviet space programme.

• A human left the Earth and circled it for the first time — the age of crewed spaceflight had begun.
• The USSR beat the United States: the American Alan Shepard reached space only three weeks later, and then only on a short, suborbital hop, without a full orbit.
• Gagarin's home town of Gzhatsk was renamed in his honour, and 12 April became a holiday — Cosmonautics Day. Since 2011 the UN has marked the date as the International Day of Human Space Flight.

Sources

The facts in this article can be verified against authoritative sources:

• NASA, NSSDCA catalog, "Vostok 1": https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1961-012A
• Encyclopædia Britannica, "Yuri Gagarin": https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yuri-Gagarin
• The Planetary Society, "Yuri Gagarin and Vostok 1, the First Human Spaceflight": https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/vostok-1
• HISTORY, "Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space": https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-12/first-man-in-space

Where different versions exist (for example, on the cause of the 1968 crash), we say so plainly rather than presenting one version as the only truth.