Yuri Gagarin Facts: Everything About The First Man In Space

Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin attained worldwide stardom after he became the first human being who traveled into space in 1961.

He was a Soviet Air Force pilot who had been fascinated with airplanes after he saw a Yakovlev fighter plane make an emergency landing near his village. After undergoing rigorous training for the Vostok program, Yuri Gagarin flew into outer space and cemented the name of the Soviet Union as a frontrunner of the space race.

Although Gagarin achieved international fame and became a celebrity at a much younger age, he could not travel to space for the second time. When he returned to the planet, he toured widely around the world to promote the achievement of the Soviet Space Program.

Yuri Gagarin’s flight to space also made the Americans reevaluate their methods and they also sent a man, Allan Shepard, to space shortly after Gagarin came back.

Gagarin wanted to go to space once more but he died when he was taking a routine training flight in 1968.

He died when he was just 34 years old. The Vostok I space capsule in which he made the journey is kept in a museum in Moscow.

People from all over the world come to see the capsule on display in the museum. Many theories are still flying around regarding the nature of his death, whether it was an accidental event or a deliberate one, stemming from political motives.

Whatever it is, Yuri Gagarin will always be remembered as the first human being to go to space, breaking the shackles of science and technology and keeping his name alive in the history books forever.

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Full Name Of Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space was born to Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina and Alexey Ivanovich Gagarin in Russia when it was part of the Soviet Union. His date of birth is March 9, 1934. His full name given by his parents is Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin. The middle part of his name is unknown to most people.

Yuri Gagarin was born on a collective farm inside the village Klushino in Soviet Russia. His mother Anna was a dairy farmer while his father Alexey worked as a carpenter.

He had three siblings. When World War II was at its height, a huge number of families in Soviet Russia had to suffer at the hands of the Nazis.

Germany captured Klushino on October 18, 1941, and burned down the school.

The family of Gagarin had to relocate to a small mud hut after the Gagarin family home was taken over by a German officer. They spent 21 months in the tiny hut of 97 sq ft (9 sq mt).

After a German attempted to kill his younger brother, Boris, Yuri sabotaged the Germans by interchanging the various chemical supplies required and pouring soil in tank batteries. His older siblings, Zoya and Valentin, were sent to labor camps located in Poland in 1943.

They made a failed attempt to escape but a Soviet soldier found them and they had to chip in for contributing to the war.

The Germans forced Yuri to work for them but he refused to do so, getting beaten in the process. He spent the remaining time of the war inside the hospital, sometimes as a patient and then as an orderly.

Anna also had to visit the hospital after her leg was cut with a scythe by a German soldier. Yuri also aided the Red Army when they were seeking out road mines that had been buried by the fleeing German army.

Early Life And Service For The Soviet Union

When the Second World War came to an end, Yuri Gagarin moved with his family to Gzhatsk where he enrolled in school. A former Russian aviator taught him his favorite subjects, physics and maths.

Despite loving to play pranks on people, Gagarin was a good learner and studied diligently. He became enthusiastic to build model airplanes after he saw a Yakovlev fighter plane make a landing in the village when the war was going on.

He completed an apprenticeship where he worked as a foundryman and also at a local school for young workers. He got selected in the Saratov Technical College.

While he was in college. He became a member of the local ‘AeroClub’ where he learned the techniques for flying a light airplane as one of the Soviet air cadets. He also worked for earning some extra money doing the work of a part-time dock laborer.

Yuri Gagarin went to the Orenburg Military Pilot’s School in 1955. It is said that he struggled twice while landing an MiG-15 aircraft which almost caused his dismissal from the school.

But he got another chance from his commander who gave him a cushion this time to sit on. This was required as he could not see clearly from the cockpit previously due to his height. This time he landed successfully.

He became a lieutenant of the Soviet Air Force after he completed his graduation in 1957. He got married in 1957 to Valentina Goryacheva and had two daughters with her.

Soon after marriage, Yuri began his career at Luostari Air Base as a fighter pilot. After 'Luna 3' was launched to capture photographs of the moon on October 6, 1959, Yuri Gagarin was promoted to the position of senior lieutenant where he expressed his interest to become a cosmonaut.

Very soon, in 1960, a secret selection process started countrywide for the launch of the first man into space. An age limit of 25-30 years was set for selection by the Central Flight Medical Commission.

Moreover, the selected candidates were to weigh less than 159 lb (72 kg) and had to be shorter than 67 in (170.18 cm) so that they could fit inside the small capsule in the spacecraft. Yuri’s height was 62 in (157.48 cm).

154 qualified pilots were shortlisted among which only 20 got approval from the Credential Committee under the Soviet government. When the candidates were asked to vote for a candidate other than themselves whom they would want to be the first human to fly, it is said that all the candidates except three chose the name of Yuri Gagarin.

Spacecraft Name From Which He Took Off

At last Yuri Gagarin got selected in the Soviet space program in an elite training group named the ‘Sochi Six’. This group was made up of the first cosmonauts under the Vostok program.

All members of the group had to go through extreme psychological and physical endurance tests. Some of these tests included staying for long times in an isolation chamber, G-force tests and oxygen starvation.

Yuri Gagarin got selected from the ‘Sochi Six’ group as the best candidate. He was sent to training alongside Gherman Titov, who was the next highest-ranked cosmonaut after Gagarin. The spacecraft in which the flight was to take place was named Vostok 1. Both of the men were sent for training on April 7, 1961.

It is widely alleged that Yuri Gagarin got selected for his humble background. Titov came from a family of middle-class background. The Soviet government wanted to show everyone that people coming from humble families could attain success under the Communist government. But people said that Yuri’s performance in the training process was the vital factor for his selection.

The Date On Which He Completed His Orbit

Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space when Gagarin’s historic flight took off on April 12, 1961. Gagarin blasted off of the top of a 98.4 ft (30 m) rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome (then called Tyuratam Missile Range).

He was aged only 27 and at the time of launch he exclaimed ‘Poyekhali’ that can be translated as ‘Here we go!’

Did you know that Gagarin’s mission was almost canceled even before it began? The night before the mission, a last-minute weigh-in was conducted and the ground crew found that the combination of the weight of Yuri Gagarin, his seat, and his spacesuit was 28.6 lb (13 kg) over the prescribed limit.

Engineers had to work all night to replace all the pieces of equipment that were not needed and they fixed any damage that had been created.

In the meantime, Yuri Gagarin and Titov were spending a time of relaxation as they had been given strict instructions to not talk about the upcoming mission.

They whiled away the night by playing pool and talking about how their life was before they became cosmonauts. They were sent to sleep by 9:30 pm but the danger and thrill of the next day meant that neither of them could close their eyes all night.

Yuri Gagarin was woken from his sleep at 5:30 am and presented with a tulip bunch that came from a local garden.

He did not shave in the morning as it was a sign of bad luck for the Soviet pilots. He ate his breakfast of tubed food, familiarizing himself with what he was going to experience during the flight in the Vostok spacecraft.

When Yuri Gagarin set off for space, he wore a bright orange spacesuit as well as a helmet which was inscribed with the letters ‘CCCP’ in red color.

The letters were added at the last minute to mark Yuri Gagarin as a Soviet citizen. This would enable him to be recognized after he safely ejected and parachuted from the spacecraft.

Yuri Gagarin was quick to get inside the Vostok capsule after which the technicians started to seal him hermetically away from the world. The time for launch came and about two minutes before the designated time, Yuri Gagarin felt the rocket swaying and moving as it was getting ready to launch.

At 9:07 am in Moscow Time, the spacecraft let out a roar and rose up the sky.

Time In Space

Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth in 108 minutes, going up a maximum altitude of 187 mi (301 km). It was not known how the zero gravity would affect him.

Hence the spacecraft was to be guided by an automatic control system. Yuri was given an envelope whose mouth was sealed which contained codes that would allow him to regain control of the aircraft if the ground crew lost control of it.

While the rocket soared up the sky, the gravitational forces were immense for him and his heart rate rose to 150 bpm. The radio signal got blocked from the intense conditions and Yuri Gagarin could not speak due to the g-forces.

The technicians were worried but they were helpless. At long last, after one agonizing minute, the voice of Gagarin was heard, free from any apprehension. The launch was successful and he was the first man in space.

Yuri Gagarin ate food from the squeeze tubes while keeping mission control updated about his condition with the help of a telegraph key and a high-frequency radio system. The envelope with codes was to be opened only during an emergency but some of the ground staff had secretly conveyed to Yuri about the code before the launch.

But Yuri Gagarin remained calm and composed and he enjoyed himself.

During his time in space, one of the sentences that were uttered by Yuri Gagarin was 'flight is proceeding normally; I am well'. The view of our planet from space made him awestruck as he watched Earth from the window of his capsule.

He spoke about the ‘beautiful aura’ of the Earth and about the magnificent shadows that were cast by clouds on the surface of the Earth. He made notes in his logbook but the pencil got lost in the spacecraft.

The returning journey was not smooth for Yuri Gagarin's flight. The cables failed to operate properly when the spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere.

Yuri Gagarin ejected about 4.35 mi (7 km) above the surface and he safely opened his parachute. When he returned to earth, Yuri Gagarin commented on the feeling of weightlessness while he was the first human in space.

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