The stars and the skies have always fascinated people. Galileo Galilei was the first to observe the cosmos through a telescope, but it took more than four centuries before we could travel through space.
Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin became the first person in world history to fly into space on April 12, 1961. His carrier rocket “Vostok” together with his ship “Vostok” were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The first cosmonaut stayed in space for 108 minutes some 327 kilometers above the earth, circled the planet and successfully landed in the Saratov region, near the city of Engels.
Yuri Gagarin is a hero of the Soviet Union, holder of the highest honors of several states and honorary citizen of many Russian and foreign cities.
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin was born on March 9, 1934, in the small village of Klushino, in the Western region of the USSR (now the Smolensk region), in a family of wealthy peasants. The future cosmonaut was the third of 4 children. He had 2 brothers and a sister.
His childhood was calm and joyful. He had the love and attention of his parents and was introduced to carpentry by his father. Unfortunately the Great Patriotic War (World War II) put an end to this. His village was occupied by the German army on October 12, 1941 and he had to live in his garden sheltered by a canoe without going to school until the Red Army liberated him on April 9, 1943. He saw his father beaten and forced to work for the Germans, and his older brother Valentin and older sister Zoya taken away by the German army during their retreat. He always remembered mothers chased away with gun butts to prevent them from protecting their children, although he refused to talk about this period of his life.
In 1943 after their village was liberated by the Red Army, the Gagarins moved to Gzhatsk (now Gagarin’s city), where Yuri continued his education at a local school. Youri was a very curious boy who studied all subjects, as well as music, art and photography.
In May 1949, after graduating from sixth grade Yuri, who was 15 years old, went to continue his studies in Moscow, at Lyubersty No. 10 vocational school. At the same time, he also played the trumpet in a brass band, took part in amateur shows and went to evening school for working-class youth. He received his diploma of the seventh year of the evening school in May 1951, and that of moulder-founder with honors in June 1951.
It was in 1951 that he moved to Saratov, where he continued his education at a technical school and it was there that he fell in love with the idea of flying. In 1955 he graduated with honors and made his first solo flight on the Yak-18 aircraft.
On October 27, 1955, Gagarin was drafted into the Soviet army and was sent to the first military aviation school for pilots in the city of Chkalov (now Orenburg). Yuri Gagarin had the best scores in all disciplines but he could not control the moment of landing. He was almost kicked out of school, but at the last moment they realized that his short stature was the problem and gave him a chair with a thick lining, which solved everything. On October 25, 1957, Yuri graduated from college, and a few days later he married Valentina Ivanovna Goryacheva, and then began serving in the Murmansk region in 1957.
At that time competition for space between the United States and the Soviet Union was in full swing. And already on January 5, 1959 the Council of Ministers took the decision to recruit 20 cosmonauts. On December 9, 1958, Gagarin wrote a report asking to be included in the group of cosmonaut candidates, and a week later he underwent a medical examination and was found fit for space flight. It was a very happy time for him as his first daughter Lena was born that same year. Youri was a very good family man and in March 1961, a month before his heroic flight, he had a second daughter, Galya.
Of the 20 candidates, only 6 were selected. Yuri Gagarin, German Titov, Grigory Nelyubov, Andriyan Nikolaev, Pavel Popovich and, Valery Bykovsky all had the chance to prepare for the first space flight during the period from December 1960 to January 1961 in the city of Zhukovsky.
Gagarin began his training on March 25, 1960. Despite serious competition, Yuri managed to defeat all his rivals. He felt no jealousy, was always honest with everyone, and had a positive attitude. Moreover in an anonymous poll of candidates, and despite the fact that they were his competitors almost all named him the best candidate for space flight.
Eventually the decision was made and Gagarin was chosen as the most suitable person for the first spaceflight. There were many reasons for this, but the most important were his combination of skills, character traits, and psychological stability. Moreover, he had a pronounced Slavic appearance and an impeccable biography. And finally, he was also a very good example of the fact that in the Soviet Union, even an ordinary person could become an astronaut.
A big problem caused by the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to send the first man into space was the safety of the man who would be sent. Yuri’s flight in the Vostok spacecraft was dangerous because due to the rush, the designers did not have time to install either the soft landing system or the emergency rescue system.
On April 12, 1961 at 09:07 Moscow time, finally, the long-awaited launch was carried out from the Baikonur cosmodrome. Gagarin’s call sign was “Kedr” and that of the leader of the launch team was “shooter”.
At the very beginning of the rocket’s ramp-up, Gagarin said “let’s go!” (поехали) Problems with the equipment began quickly, and Gagarin climbed 100 kilometers higher than originally planned. Fortunately, this was without serious consequences because there was no problem with the braking system. Otherwise, the astronaut would have spent more than a month in space when he only had 10 days of water and food.
In orbit, Gagarin reported on his feelings, the state of the ship, and his observations. He enjoyed the view of earth from space, and recorded the following words on the onboard tape recorder:
“I observe the clouds above the Earth, small cumulus clouds and shadows from them. Beautiful beauty! … Attention. I see the horizon of the earth. Such a beautiful halo. First, a rainbow from the very surface of the Earth and down. Such a rainbow passes. Beautiful!”
He also did simple experiments, like eating, drinking, and taking notes with a pencil. Upon putting this one down, he discovered that the pencil instantly began to float. In addition he also recorded all his feelings and observations which allows us to share this historic moment for humanity.
Another interesting fact should be mentioned here. Before the first manned flight into space, it was not known how a person would react. Therefore, for safety, special protection has been provided, so that the first cosmonaut does not try to control the flight of the special shuttle or damage the equipment if he is seized with a fit of madness. To activate the manual control, he had to open a sealed envelope and solve a mathematical problem whose solution produced a code to unlock the control panel.
At the end of the flight, another problem arose and the braking system did not work properly. Because of this, the craft tumbled randomly at a rate of one rotation per second for one minute. Then the ship finished its descent and Gagarin according to the flight plan ejected at an altitude of 7 kilometers. He landed near the villages of Smelovka and Podgornoye in the Saratov region after a heroic 106-minute flight. His biggest dream was realized, not only was he in space but he was the first man to do so.
Surprisingly, the fly was completely secret and even the media only learned about it the day after. On the other hand, as soon as the information became available Gagarin immediately became a world star.
The next day he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and a month later he was sent abroad on a peace mission, where he was to visit more than 20 countries. Gagarin was a tactful and charming man, and his personal charisma did much to enhance the positive image of the USSR. In the following years, Yuri Gagarin mainly engaged in social activities and made a lot of effort to popularize aeronautics which was his passion. He was also preparing to become a member of the lunar space crew unfortunately he died before that happened
Yuri Gagarin soon fell ill with the star disease. He began to devote more and more time to work at the Cosmonaut Training Center becoming the Commander of the Cosmonaut Corps on May 23, 1961. In the fall of 1961, he entered NE Zhukovsky to obtain higher education. In 1964 he became deputy director of the cosmonaut training center and was appointed commander of the Soviet cosmonaut corps. In the summer of 1966 he himself returned to flight training and began to prepare for a new space flight under the Soyuz program. He is named Komarov’s understudy, who made the first flight on the new ship. A tragic accident happened during the first flight and, following a malfunction of the solar battery, the fly is interrupted earlier than expected which results in the death of Komarov.
Gagarin and his instructor Vladimir Seregin died on March 27, 1968 while on a training flight. Gagarin was only 34 years old. Subsequently, the bodies of the pilots were cremated and the urns containing their ashes were buried in the Kremlin wall.
Many assumptions about the reason for its crash have been heard. It was only in 2013, after some secret information was declassified, that it became known that a supersonic-flying military fighter suddenly appeared next to the pilots’ plane, which led to the flow of air of the MIG-15UTI in a spiral, from which the pilots did not have enough time to eject.
Yuri Gagarin’s biography and his contribution to the development of space science forever went down in history as an example to follow, and his charming smile became the symbol of an entire space age, and remains to this day.
In connection with his death, for the first time in the history of the USSR, national mourning was declared for a person who was not the head of state.
The city of Gzhatsk and the Gzhatsky district were renamed the city of Gagarin and the Gagarinsky district, the streets and avenues of many cities of Russia were named after the cosmonaut, and monuments were erected in different cities of Russia and the world
Every year on April 12 the space community around the world commemorates Gagarin’s achievement.
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