12. April 1961
65 years ago
In 108 minutes a 27-year-old became the first human in space — and saw the Earth as a blue sphere.
On 12 April 1961, at the Baikonur launch site, a 27-year-old Soviet pilot sat atop an R-7 rocket. No one knew for certain whether a human could survive in space. As the engines lit, Yuri Gagarin shouted a single word: "Poyekhali!" — "Let's go!"
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The rocket rose on a column of fire, pressing Gagarin down into his seat. Within minutes Vostok 1 climbed through the atmosphere, shedding stage after stage, and broke out into weightlessness high above the Earth.
For the first time, a human saw the Earth from space — a blue sphere wrapped in a thin veil of atmosphere. "The Earth is blue," he reported. Vostok 1 completed one full orbit of the planet in 108 minutes.
Then came the journey home. The capsule plunged back into the atmosphere wrapped in glowing plasma, the temperature outside rising to thousands of degrees.
At about seven kilometres up, Gagarin ejected from the capsule and floated down by parachute over the fields near Saratov. A startled farmer's wife and her granddaughter were among the first to greet the world's first spaceman. Overnight, he became famous across the globe.