After completing one orbit, the spacecraft's automatic controls brought him safely back to Earth. On April 12, 1961, Gagarin was launched into orbit by a Vostok rocket and became the first man in space.
#FIRST MAN TO ORBIT THE EARTH SERIES#
There, Korolev worked his magic, building a series of rockets over several years. Embarrassed in turn by their failure to develop an atomic bomb before the Americans did, the Soviet leadership had poured a huge portion of the country’s budget into scientific research, building a testing ground and rocket base in Kazakhstan that, wrote Stephen Walker in his new book “ Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space,” was four times the size of Greater London. The Vostok rocket was the brainchild of Soviet engineer Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. After parachuting from the craft near the Russian village of Smelovka, Gagarin landed a hero - and a major embarrassment for the United States, already stung by the Soviet first-in-the-race launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite four years earlier. Khrushchev’s answer came 60 years ago, on April 12, 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin circled the Earth aboard a spacecraft called Vostok 1. In his inaugural address in January, he made an overture to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, inviting the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to join the United States in “exploring the stars.” Kennedy blamed the Soviets for his bad April. The result, a week later, was the Bay of Pigs fiasco, a military and political disaster that would only embolden Fidel Castro and his chief benefactor, the Soviet Union. This is how the human heart adapts to space (Photo by NASA via Getty Images) NASA/Getty Images
Kelly is one of two crew members spending an entire year in space.
IN SPACE - JULY 12: In this handout photo provided by NASA, Expedition 44 flight engineer and NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is seen inside the Cupola, a special module which provides a 360-degree viewing of the Earth and the International Space Station Jin space.