Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space

Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin launched aboard Vostok 1 and orbited Earth once in about 108 minutes. He landed by parachute after ejecting from the capsule, which was normal for the design.

Context

Gagarin was a 27-year-old Soviet Air Force pilot chosen from a group of cosmonaut candidates. Vostok 1 lifted off from the Baikonur site in Kazakhstan on April 12, 1961. The flight was almost entirely automatic, since planners were unsure how a person would cope with weightlessness, and the controls were locked with a code that could be opened only in an emergency.

The Vostok capsule had no soft-landing system for people. At roughly 7 kilometers altitude Gagarin ejected and descended on his own parachute, while the capsule came down separately. Because international record rules at the time required the pilot to land inside his craft, Soviet officials reportedly left this detail out of early reports.

The flight came less than four years after Sputnik and about three weeks before Alan Shepard became the first American in space on a short suborbital hop in May 1961. Gagarin never flew in space again and died in a jet training crash in 1968.

Gagarin's flight lasted 108 minutes from launch to landing, and he reported feeling well in weightlessness. He came down in the Saratov region of the Soviet Union, near the Volga River, where local farmers were the first to meet him. Soviet announcements gave the launch time only after he had landed safely.