17.12.2022
Welcome to our website, our dear readers. The Soviet Union accomplished a remarkable feat in space exploration on April 12, 1961. At about 9:00 a.m. that morning, Cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin went into space aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft.
After reaching a maximum altitude of about 327 kilometers, Yuri Gagarin safely returned to Earth and became a true world hero. It was this flight that delivered a strong “slap in the face” to the Americans and their space program and it was after Gagarin’s successful flight that the so-called “space race” began, paving the way for future space exploration and a huge rivalry between the US and the USSR.
And today we decided to take a closer look at this outstanding man. In this article we have collected the most interesting facts about Yuri Gagarin.
1. The first flight of the world’s first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin lasted just 108 minutes. When the news of the first flight flew around the planet in a few hours, Yuri was already a “citizen of the world”. The courage and fearlessness of the simple Russian guy with a big smile conquered everybody. And his phrase “Let’s go!”, which he said before stepping into the unknown, became proverbial.
2. He was one of 20 pilots selected for the original Soviet space program. The candidate pilots underwent physical, mental, emotional and aptitude tests, and Gagarin performed the best of all. When his fellow candidates were asked to vote for the best candidate to make the first space flight in human history, all but three of them chose Yuri.
3. Although any of the 20 candidates chosen could go down in history as the first man to conquer space, Yuri was the most outstanding among them. His personality set him apart from the other candidates in many ways. He was physically fit, humble, intelligent, attentive, emotionally stable, good at math, and had an excellent memory.
4. Preflight training took place in a very tense atmosphere. From time to time some technical problems arose. Among other things, no one knew how a person would behave in space. Some psychologists believed that Gagarin would go crazy if left alone in the void. That’s why the flight was autopiloted.
5. After spending 1 hour and 28 minutes in space, the Vostok 1 spacecraft began its return to Earth. Unfortunately, the capsule had no landing gear to facilitate the landing of the spacecraft, so Yuri had to eject and land already by parachute. Gagarin ejected from Vostok 1 at 7,000 meters above the ground.
Despite the fact that he was in space and returned home safely, the FAI said that according to official standards, Yuri Gagarin’s flight cannot be called a “space flight,” because the cosmonaut had to land on the ground in a spaceship and not by parachute.
6. Initially, no one had planned to solemnly welcome Gagarin in Moscow. But everything changed at the last moment, after First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev called the Kremlin. He called and demanded that Yuri be given the most honorable reception in the capital (Khrushchev himself was in his residence in Pitsunda, Abkhazia at the time).
He also called Defense Minister Marshal Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky and asked that Lieutenant Yuri Gagarin be promoted urgently. Malinovsky reluctantly replied that he could give Gagarin the rank of captain. Khrushchev was not satisfied with this and said that Gagarin should be given the rank of major at least. Two days later, on April 14, 1961, by order of the USSR Minister of Defense, Senior Lieutenant Gagarin was promoted to the rank of Major.
7. Out of respect for Soviet customs, Yuri modestly took off his shoes when he first entered the newly built Vostok 1 spacecraft. Such behavior made a great impression on the chief designer of the spacecraft, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.
8. He narrowly escaped his untimely death on April 24, 1967, when the flight of the Soyuz-1 (the first Soviet manned spacecraft (KK) of the Soyuz series) ended in a tragic accident that killed Soviet cosmonaut-engineer Vladimir Komarov, a Hero of the USSR. Gagarin was the understudy to Komarov during preparations for this flight. Due to design flaws, the Soyuz spacecraft’s parachute failed during descent.
9. Approximately one year after the Soyuz-1 mission disaster, on March 27, 1968, Yuri Gagarin, along with pilot Vladimir Sergeyevich Seryogin, who was acting as an instructor, were performing a training flight on the MiG-15UTI. At the same time there was an accident and the plane crashed. Both pilots were killed. The Soviet Union declared a nationwide mourning period. It was the first time in the USSR when a day of mourning was declared in connection with the death of a person, who was not the acting head of the country.
10. Gagarin had only one wife, Valentina Ivanovna Gagarina. Yuri and Valentina married in 1957. The couple had two daughters: Elena and Galina.
11. Since April 1961, since the Soviet Union’s space triumph, Yuri had received many invitations from other countries, both officially and unofficially. In all, Yuri received invitations from 80 countries.
The world trips, especially the first ones, were a real test for the Soviet cosmonaut: during this time he had already formed as a social and political activist and popularizer of cosmonautics. As a rule, during his trips he was accompanied by an entire delegation, which was headed (mostly) by the Soviet pilot Kamanin Nikolai Petrovich.
In total from 1961 until his death Yuri made 46 foreign visits, having visited 29 countries.
