Engineering & invention · Government & military
Yuri Gagarin
Vostok 1 cosmonaut
Also known as Yuri A. Gagarin · Yury Gagarin
Photograph · Image credit
Who they are
Yuri Gagarin was the cosmonaut aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. His single orbit, lasting about 108 minutes, made him the first human to travel in space. The milestone extended the Soviet orbital program from satellites to human flight and changed the scale of what people could directly experience beyond Earth.
His flight marks the transition from uncrewed orbital capability to human spaceflight.
Selected contributions
- Completed the first human orbital flight aboard Vostok 1.Source ↗
In the timeline
- Apr 12, 1961Gagarin completes the first human orbital flight
Biography sources & portrait credit
- Remembering Yuri Gagarin 50 Years Later ↗NASA Johnson Space Center
Portrait credit
Aleksandr Mokletsov / SovInformBuro; Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. CC BY 4.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Photograph. Cropped to 4:5, resized to 320 × 400 and converted to WebP.
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