Are you in London 8 Dec 2017 - 10 Jan 2018?? If so why not go to the #SPUTNIK60 exhibition at the Russian Cultural organisation offices in Kensington! Details on their Facebook page and in NEWS on our WELCOME page (scroll down). |
Yuri Gagarin
The story of the first human in space
On the morning of 12 April 1961, an unknown Russian air force pilot in an orange spacesuit and white helmet was driven by bus towards a giant metal gantry rising out of the steppes of Kazakhstan in the southern USSR. A few hours later, he had become one of the most famous men in the world. His name was Yuri Gagarin, and after a daring flight around the globe in 108 minutes, he became the first human being to orbit the Earth. As Yuri approached the metal structure, it could be seen to contain a steaming rocket being prepared for flight. At its tip was a spacecraft named Vostok, Russian for ‘East’. |
The clock ran its course to the appointed hour of launch – the Russians did not do countdowns – then the rocket burst into life. "Poyekhali!” Gagarin shouted on the radio, “Let’s go!” Vostok rose on a tower of flames and smoke, then arced off to the east, climbing higher and higher, accelerating away until it was a tiny bright speck in the sky. The ground crew gaped at the steaming launch pad, astonished by the enormity of what they had started, and wondering how it would end. |
Ensconced at the tip of the racing rocket, Gagarin sounded calm: “I feel excellent. Continuing the flight. G-load increasing. All is well.”
Within minutes, he had smashed the human speed record of 1,600 mph, then the human altitude record of 19 miles. Booster rockets peeled off and crashed to the steppes, as the core rocket stage drove Gagarin ever faster.
Within minutes, he had smashed the human speed record of 1,600 mph, then the human altitude record of 19 miles. Booster rockets peeled off and crashed to the steppes, as the core rocket stage drove Gagarin ever faster.
The sky in his porthole turned from blue to black. Finally, at height of 112 miles the rocket shut down violently, he was thrown forward into his straps, then suddenly found himself weightless. Several loose objects appeared from nowhere and floated silently around his cabin. He had attained orbital velocity of 17,000 mph, but felt strangely motionless. |
If he was nervous, he did not show it: "The craft is operating normally. I'm feeling fine, and I'm in good spirits.”
“I see Earth! It is so beautiful,” Gagarin radioed. He could pick out fields, forests and rivers.
He sped across Siberia and Japan, then out over the Pacific Ocean as darkness fell on Hawaii. The stars were the brightest he had ever seen, unflickering and unfiltered by atmosphere. His curved orbit took him south to the Straits of Magellan at the southern tip of Chile, which he reached an hour after launch. |
Now, news of his flight was announced to the world on Radio Moscow. A storm of excitement ensued. At home, his wife Valya with their two daughters, and mother Anna, knew little if anything of Gagarin’s secretive training and were not expecting this.
As he hurtled over the South Atlantic and into daylight once more, Gagarin saw his second sunrise of the day. The coast of Africa was coming up fast, and it was time to fire the retro-rockets to bring him down out of orbit on a course back to Russia.
Now came the moment for re-entry. Rockets fired for 40 seconds to drop out of orbit and Gagarin reported: “Everything is OK.”
As the flames flickered around Vostok’s portholes, Gagarin was crushed into his seat by eight times the force of gravity. He raced earthwards towards the town Engels in the Saratov region.
As he hurtled over the South Atlantic and into daylight once more, Gagarin saw his second sunrise of the day. The coast of Africa was coming up fast, and it was time to fire the retro-rockets to bring him down out of orbit on a course back to Russia.
Now came the moment for re-entry. Rockets fired for 40 seconds to drop out of orbit and Gagarin reported: “Everything is OK.”
As the flames flickered around Vostok’s portholes, Gagarin was crushed into his seat by eight times the force of gravity. He raced earthwards towards the town Engels in the Saratov region.
But the capsule was empty. Gagarin was floating down separately in his red space suit under a red-and-white parachute. He had circled in earth in just under two hours.
An astonished farmer and her daughter, tending a calf, observed the strangely-clad figure make his descent.
Gagarin later recalled: "When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them: don't be afraid, I am a Russian like you, who has descended from space. I must find a telephone to call Moscow!"
The peasant women in their headscarves embraced him. The first human spaceflight was safely over.
Gagarin was feted around the world, meeting heads of state and premiers, charming all with his broad smile, smart uniform and sincere personality. He was mobbed when he visited London and Manchester, meeting Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and having lunch with the Queen. But his wife said she saw more of him on television than at home. |
Just seven years after his space flight, Gagarin died in March 1968 when his jet fighter crashed in a forest outside Moscow.
Now the name of Yuri Gagarin ranks alongside Columbus, Magellan, Captain James Cook and Neil Armstrong as one of the greatest explorers in history.
Since Yuri’s pioneering fight, more than 500 people have followed him off our planet into space.
Yuri in Scotland and the UK
Yuri has a commemorative stone at Skara Brae in Orkney, and a street Gagarin Way is named after him in the Fife mining village of Lumphinnans.
Gagarin’s statue is on display at Greenwich Observatory, outside London. It was donated to Britain for the 50th anniversary of his UK visit, and unveiled by his daughter Elena.
Gagarin’s statue is on display at Greenwich Observatory, outside London. It was donated to Britain for the 50th anniversary of his UK visit, and unveiled by his daughter Elena.
Yuri's Night - and more
Every 12th April, Yuri’s Night is celebrated around the world with various events. A free film, First Orbit, is also available on the internet.
Yuri Gagarin had a huge influence on the Russian cosmonauts as well as the astronauts from other countries who went into space after him. Here are two stories.
Yuri Gagarin had a huge influence on the Russian cosmonauts as well as the astronauts from other countries who went into space after him. Here are two stories.
Soviet cosmonaut Georgi Grechko, born in 1931, was a friend of Yuri Gagarin and was closely involved in the construction of his spacecraft. Grechko worked in the design office of the mastermind of the Russian space programme, Sergei Korolev. “We made the rocket for Gagarin, and the ship in which he flew. We sat in our workplaces and listened to the broadcast of Gagarin's flight from launch to landing,” he recalls of that day in 1961. When Gagarin landed, their first reaction was relief: “The first cosmonaut was still alive and well, and our technical equipment, to which Gagarin entrusted his life, worked properly. We were proud that a man from our country was first in space.” Grechko later flew on the rockets that he helped design, and made three space flights. He entered the cosmonaut corps in 1963 as part of the first group of civilians bound for space. Arriving in Star City for training, he was met by Gagarin and briefed on his mission. Grechko remembers that Gagarin wanted to fly in space again, but higher authorities had decided not to risk their national hero by putting him back into space. Grechko was at the airport waiting to do a parachute jump the day Gagarin died. “His plane failed to return and as time passed we realised all the fuel must have been used up.” Then a smoking crash site was found in the forest. They found Gagarin’s remains, along with his co-pilot, confirming that one history’s greatest explorers had died. Georgi Grechko knows Scotland well. He came to Edinburgh and Glasgow in 2007 with the Association of Space Explorers. He returned in 2008 to Inverness and the Orkney Islands, where he laid the Gagarin stone at Skara Brae. |
American astronaut Dick Gordon, whose grandfather emigrated from Aberdeenshire in Scotland, distinctly remembers where he was on 12 April 1961 when Yuri Gagarin beat his nation into space. “When Yuri flew, I was a young flight instructor in a fighter squadron in Miramar, California.” He had studied chemistry, then taken up flying and eventually became a test pilot. “Once the Russians got into orbit, and we followed with our own satellite, we knew very well that humans were going to be next,” he recalls. “The shock was that they got there before we did!” When the first American astronaut selections were announced, Gordon knew all of them. “They were my peers. When the United States started a manned program, I wanted to be there.” A month after Gagarin’s space flight, Gordon won the Bendix Trophy air race from Los Angeles to New York, crossing the country in under 3 hours. He joined the US astronaut corps in 1963. Despite the Cold War rivalry, Gordon met several Soviet cosmonauts and remains good friends with Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space. When Armstrong and Aldrin finally set down on the Moon’s Sea of Tranquillity in July 1969, a year after Gagarin’s death, they laid a Russian medal in his honour in the dust. |
Now have a look at the story of other Russian space firsts, followed by some suggested activities.....