“Have you come from outer space?”
12 April 2011
At 10.55 am on the morning of 12 April 1961, a man wearing an orange flight suit and a white helmet drifted towards Earth under a large parachute. His landing on the grassy plains of central Russia was watched only by a cow and two astonished farm workers. Mrs. Anna Takhtarova stepped towards the stranger and stammered, “Have you come from outer space?” Yuri Gagarin replied triumphantly, “Yes. Would you believe it, I certainly have!”
The young man who made history that day was born in a village in the western Soviet Union. His father was a carpenter and times were hard. After his family moved to a nearby town, Yuri went to college and worked in a metal factory. He also joined an aero club and learned to fly light aircraft. He soon joined the air force and began to fly jets. In the spring of 1960, he was accepted to join a group of 20 pilots who would be trained as future cosmonauts.
After a year of intensive training, the 27 year-old air force lieutenant was told that he would be the first man to fly in space. The moment of truth came four days later when he climbed into a ball-shaped Vostok capsule fitted on top of a towering rocket. The onlookers held their breath as the engines lit up and the rocket disappeared over the eastern horizon. “I see Earth! It is so beautiful!" exclaimed the world’s first space traveller.
78 minutes after blast-off, the Vostok’s engines fired and the capsule was sent back into the atmosphere. Gagarin ejected at an altitude of 6 km and completed his incredible journey beneath a billowing parachute.
The young hero became world famous, but he never flew in space again. Gagarin died when his plane crashed during a routine training flight on 27 March 1968. More than 500 people from many countries have followed in his footsteps. The most recent launch to the International Space Station took place from the same pad as Gagarin’s famous flight. Painted on the side of the rocket was a picture of the first human to orbit planet Earth.
