The first person to travel into outer space was the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin , who flew aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1 on 12 April 1961.

Quick Scoop

  • Yuri Gagarin was a Soviet air force pilot selected for the early cosmonaut corps during the Cold War space race.
  • His mission, Vostok 1, completed a single orbit of Earth in about 108 minutes, making him the first human in space and the first to orbit the planet.
  • The flight launched from what is now Kazakhstan and landed in the Soviet Union, instantly turning Gagarin into a global space-age icon.

A tiny bit more context

  • Gagarin’s flight on 12 April 1961 gave the Soviet Union a major early lead over the United States in the space race.
  • The success of Vostok 1 helped inspire later human spaceflight programs, including NASA’s goal to land astronauts on the Moon later in the 1960s.

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