Yuri Gagarin: Everyday photos of the First Man in Space, 1960s
The son of a carpenter on a collective farm, Gagarin graduated as a molder from a trade school near Moscow in 1951.
Gagarin was stationed at the Luostari Air Base, near the Norwegian border, before his selection for the Soviet space programme with five other cosmonauts.
From a pool of 154 qualified pilots short-listed by their Air Force units, the military physicians chose 29 cosmonaut candidates, of which 20 were approved by the Credential Committee of the Soviet government.
On 12 April 1961, at 6:07 am UTC, the Vostok 1 spacecraft was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Aboard was Gagarin, the first human to travel into space, using the call sign Kedr (cedar).
The five first-stage engines fired until the first separation event, when the four side boosters fell away, leaving the core engine.
“The feeling of weightlessness was somewhat unfamiliar compared with Earth conditions. Here, you feel as if you were hanging in a horizontal position in straps. You feel as if you are suspended”, Gagarin wrote in his post-flight report.
At about 7,000 meters (23,000 ft), Gagarin ejected from the descending capsule as planned and landed using a parachute.
Gagarin and Soviet officials initially refused to admit that he had not landed with his spacecraft, an omission which became apparent after Titov’s flight on Vostok 2 four months later.
Newspapers around the globe published his biography and details of his flight. He was escorted in a long motorcade of high-ranking officials through the streets of Moscow to the Kremlin where, in a lavish ceremony, Nikita Khrushchev awarded him the title Hero of the Soviet Union.
Gagarin gained a reputation as an adept public figure and was noted for his charismatic smile.
Gagarin toured widely abroad, accepting the invitation from about 30 countries in the years following his flight.
On 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base, Gagarin and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died when their MiG-15UTI crashed near the town of Kirzhach.
According to a biography of Gagarin by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony, Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin, the KGB worked “not just alongside the Air Force and the official commission members but against them.”
The report states that an air-traffic controller provided Gagarin with outdated weather information and that by the time of his flight, conditions had deteriorated significantly.
Because of the out-of-date weather report, the crew believed their altitude was higher than it was and could not react properly to bring the MiG-15 out of its spin.
Following his rise to fame, at a Black Sea resort in September 1961, he was reportedly caught by his wife during a liaison with a nurse who had aided him after a boating incident.
Petrov also said Gagarin had been baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church as a child, and a 2011 Foma magazine article quoted the rector of the Orthodox Church in Star City saying, “Gagarin baptized his elder daughter Yelena shortly before his space flight; and his family used to celebrate Christmas and Easter and keep icons in the house”.
