Gagarin, Yuri A. (1934-1968)
Russian cosmonaut
Yuri A. Gagarin was the first human in space. In 1961, the boyish-looking Soviet cosmonaut captured the attention of the world with his short flight around the earth. "He invited us all into space," American astronaut Neil Armstrong said of him, as quoted in Aviation Week and Space Technology.
The third of four children, Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin was born on a collective farm in Klushino, in the Smolensk region of the Russian Federation. His father, Aleksey Ivanovich Gagarin, was a carpenter on the farm and his mother, Anna, a dairymaid. Gagarin grew up helping them with their work. Neither of his parents had much formal education, but they encouraged him in his schooling. During World War II, the family was evicted from their home by invading German troops, and Gagarin's older brother and sister were taken prisoner for slave labor, though they later escaped.
After the war, Gagarin went to vocational school in Moscow, originally intending to become a foundry worker, and then he moved on to the Saratov Industrial Technical School. He was still learning to be a foundryperson, although his favorite subjects were physics and mathematics. In 1955, during his fourth and final year of school, he joined a local flying club. His first flight as a passenger, he later wrote in Road to the Stars, "gave meaning to my whole life." He quickly mastered flying, consumed by a new determination to become a fighter pilot. He joined the Soviet Air Force after graduation. The launch of Sputnik—the first artificial satellite sent into space—occurred on October 4, 1957, while he pursued his military and flight training. He graduated with honors that same year and married medical student Valentina Ivanova Goryacheva. They would have two children, a daughter and a son.
Gagarin volunteered for service in the Northern Air Fleet and joined the Communist Party. He followed closely news of other Sputnik launches; although there had been no official announcement, Gagarin guessed that preparations for manned flights would soon begin and he volunteered for cosmonaut duty. Gagarin completed the required weeks of physical examinations and testing in 1960, just before his twenty-sixth birthday. He was then told that he had been made a member of the first group of twelve cosmonauts. The assignment was a secret, and he was forbidden to tell even his wife until his family had settled into the new space-program complex called Zvezdniy Gorodok (Star Town), forty miles from Moscow. An outgoing, natural leader, the stocky, smiling Gagarin stood out even among his well-qualified peers. Sergei Korolyov, the head of the Soviet space program and chief designer of its vehicles, thought Gagarin had the makings of a first-rate scientist and engineer, as well as being an excellent pilot. In March of 1961, Korolyov approved the selection of Gagarin to ride Vostok I into orbit.
Senior Lieutenant Gagarin made history on April 12, 1961, when a converted ballistic missile propelled his Vostok capsule into Earth orbit from the remote Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Vostok was controlled automatically, and Gagarin spent his time reporting observations of the Earth and his own condition. He performed such tasks as writing and tapping out a message on a telegraph key, thus establishing that a human being's coordination remained intact even while weightless in space. Proving that people could work in space, he also ate and drank to verify that the body would take nourishment in weightlessness. He commented repeatedly on the beauty of the earth from space and on how pleasant weightlessness felt.
Gagarin rode his spacecraft for 108 minutes, ejecting from the spherical reentry module after the craft reentered the atmosphere just short of one complete orbit. Ejection was standard procedure for all Vostok pilots, although Gagarin dutifully supported the official fiction that he had remained in his craft all the way to the ground—a requirement for international certification of the flight as a record. Cosmonaut and capsule landed safely near the banks of the Volga River.
After doctors proclaimed him unaffected by his flight, Gagarin was presented to the public as an international hero. He received an instant promotion to the rank of major and made appearances around the world. He was named a Hero of the Soviet Union and a Hero of Socialist Labor, and he became an honorary citizen of fourteen cities in six countries. He received the Tsiolkovsky Gold Medal of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the Gold Medal of the British Interplanetary Society, and two awards from the International Aeronautical Federation. The flight had many implications for international affairs: American leaders extended cautious congratulations and redoubled their own efforts in the space race, while the Soviet media proclaimed that Gagarin's success showed the strength of socialism.
Gagarin became commander of the cosmonaut team. In 1964, he was made deputy director of the cosmonaut training center at the space program headquarters complex—where he oversaw the selection and training of the first women cosmonauts. He served as capsule communicator—the link between cosmonauts and ground controllers—for four later space flights in the Vostok and Voskhod programs. At various times during this period, he also held political duties; he chaired the Soviet-Cuban Friendship Society and served on the Council of the Union and the Supreme Soviet Council of Nationalities.
Gagarin always wanted to venture back to space, and in 1966, he was returned to active status to serve as the backup cosmonaut to Vladimir Komarov for the first flight of the new Soyuz spacecraft. When the Soyuz 1 mission ended and Komarov died due to a parachute malfunction, Gagarin was assigned to command the upcoming Soyuz 3. But Gagarin himself did not live to fly the Soyuz 3 mission. On March 27, 1968, he took off for a routine proficiency flight in a two-seat MiG–15 trainer. He and his flight instructor became engaged in low-level maneuvers with two other jets. Gagarin's plane crossed close behind another jet and was caught in its vortex; he lost control and the jet crashed into the tundra at high speed, killing both occupants instantly.
Gagarin was given a hero's funeral. The Cosmonaut Training Center was renamed in his honor, as were his former hometown, a space tracking ship, and a lunar crater. His wife continued to work as a biomedical laboratory assistant at Zvezdniy Gorodok, and Gagarin's office there was preserved as a museum; a huge statue of him was erected in Moscow. His book Survival in Space was published posthumously. Written with space-program physician Vladimir Lebedev, the work outlines Gagarin's views on the problems and requirements for successful long-term space flights. On April 12, 1991, thirty years after Gagarin's flight, his cosmonaut successors, along with eighteen American astronauts, gathered at Baikonur to salute his achievements.
History of Manned Space Exploration
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