Yuri Gagarin — first human in space

A 27-year-old aboard Vostok 1 circled Earth once in 108 minutes and became the first human in space.

The story

At 9:07 Moscow time on 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin called out "Poyekhali!" — "Let's go!" — and left Baikonur aboard Vostok 1. One hundred and eight minutes later he had circled the Earth once and landed by parachute in a field near the Volga, the first human to have been to space.

Most of the flight was automatic. Nobody was sure a person could stay sane in weightlessness, so the manual-control code was sealed in an envelope; the orbit reached 327 km at its highest. Looking out, Gagarin said the Earth was blue. His pulse the night before the flight was recorded at 64, his normal resting rate.

The landing is startling by today's standards. He did not touch down in the capsule but ejected at 7 km and descended alone under a parachute, because the capsule's impact was beyond what a person could survive. To a farmer and her daughter in the field he said: "Don't be afraid, I am a Soviet citizen. I need to find a telephone."

A 27-year-old pilot from a village became a hero to the whole species, and 12 April is still marked as the International Day of Human Space Flight. Switch on satellites in the sky view and the ISS can be seen tracing the same kind of low orbit today, in 93 minutes to Gagarin's 108.

Why it matters

The question the flight answered was whether a person could live in space at all — swallow in weightlessness, keep a steady heart, keep judgement. Without that answer no crewed programme could be designed. Those 108 minutes provided it.

The political shock exceeded Sputnik's. Alan Shepard's 15-minute ballistic flight followed three weeks later, but it was not an orbit, and on 25 May President Kennedy committed the United States to a Moon landing within the decade. Apollo's political origin is this flight.

In engineering terms it was the first test of re-entry and recovery with a person aboard. The spherical Vostok capsule could re-enter in any attitude, and that simplicity made the first flight safe; ejecting the pilot instead of landing in the capsule was part of the same conservative design.

How to watch

Vostok 1 was a single orbit with no trajectory left to replay. Switch on satellites in the sky view instead and the ISS and other spacecraft in the same kind of low orbit are drawn from real orbital elements. Gagarin's orbit, 169 km at perigee and 327 km at apogee, was lower than today's ISS at about 420 km.

Passes of the ISS are visible only in the hour or two after sunset or before sunrise. Search for the ISS in the sky view and the time and bearing of its highest pass over your location are computed.

The flight log and communications recordings are public in Russian space museums and in European and American archives — including the voice saying "Poyekhali".

Background

Gagarin was one of six finalists from twenty pilots selected in 1960; his small stature (157 cm) suited the cramped capsule and his calm was noted. His backup, Gherman Titov, flew Vostok 2 four months later, seventeen orbits over a full day.

America's first orbital flight was John Glenn's Friendship 7 on 20 February 1962, three orbits. The Soviets stayed ahead with the first woman in space (Tereshkova, 1963) and the first spacewalk (Leonov, 1965), but lost the race to the Moon.

Gagarin died at 34 in a training-flight crash in March 1968. The Apollo 11 crew left a medal in his memory on the Moon, and his name is carried by a lunar crater and by the launch pad at Baikonur.

Vostok 1’s flight was automatic. Unsure whether a person could stay conscious in weightlessness, controllers flew it from the ground, and Gagarin was given a sealed envelope with the code to unlock manual control in an emergency. After re-entry, at 7 km up, he ejected from the capsule and landed by parachute — the capsule had no means of landing safely with a person inside. Because international aviation records required the pilot to land with the vehicle, this fact was officially withheld until 1971.

FAQ

How long was the flight?

108 minutes, one orbit, reaching 327 km at its highest.

Did he land in the capsule?

No — he ejected at 7 km and came down separately by parachute, because the capsule's landing impact was too hard to survive.

Did he fly it himself?

Mostly automatic; the manual-control code was in a sealed envelope for emergencies only.

When was the first American orbital flight?

John Glenn on 20 February 1962; Alan Shepard's May 1961 flight was suborbital.

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Times and figures are approximate — verify with official sources when planning travel. Simulation uses J2000 mean elements.