Gagarin

Vostok 1
Was the first spaceflight in the Vostok program and the first human spaceflight in history. The Vostok 3KA spacecraft was launched on April 12, 1961. The flight took Yuri Gagarin, acosmonaut from the Soviet Union, into space. The flight marked the first time that a human entered outer space, as well as the first orbital flight of a manned vehicle. Vostok 1 was launched by the Sovietspace program, and was designed by Soviet engineers guided under military supervision.
The spaceflight consisted of a single orbit of the Earth. According to official records, the spaceflight took 108minutes from launch to landing. As planned, Gagarin landed separately from his spacecraft, having ejected with a parachute 7 km (23,000 ft) above ground.
Crew
27 year-old Yuri Gagarin was the onlycrew member of Vostok 1. The Vostok spacecraft were designed to carry a single cosmonaut.
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin 9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968
Was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the firsthuman being to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961.
Gagarin became an international celebrity, and was awarded many medals andhonours, including Hero of the Soviet Union, the nation's highest honour. Vostok 1 marked his only spaceflight, but he served as backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission (which ended in a fatal crash). Gagarinlater became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre outside Moscow, which was later named after him. Gagarin died in 1968 when a MiG 15 training jet he was piloting crashed
Careerin the Soviet Air Force
In his youth, Gagarin became interested in space and planets.[5] After studying for one year at a vocational technical school in Lyubertsy, Gagarin was selected for furthertraining at a technical high school in Saratov. While there, he joined the "AeroClub", and learned to fly a light aircraft, a hobby that would take up an increasing portion of his time.
In 1955, after...