Yuri Alexeivich Gagarin was an USSR pilot and cosmonaut who is famous for being the first man in space. He was the first human to journey into outer space when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961.
Background
Yuri Gagarin, the third child in the family, was born on March 9, 1934, in the village of Klushino, Smolensk Province. His father, Aleksey Ivanovich Gagarin was a carpenter on the farm and his mother, Timofeyevna Gagarina was a dairymaid. Gagarin grew up helping them with their work. There were other sibilings in the family: older brother Valentin, older sister Zoya, and younger brother Boris. During World War II, the family was evicted from their home by invading German troops, and Gagarin’s older brother and sister were taken prisoner for slave labor, though they later escaped.
Education
In September of 1941 he entered the 1st grade of secondary school in Klushino village. During the period of 1945-1949 he studied in the secondary school of Gzhatsk (graduated after 6 classes). After the war, Gagarin went to vocational school in Moscow, originally intending to become a foundry worker, and then he moved on to the Saratov Industrial Technical School. From 1949 to 1951 he was a student of the vocational school No. 10 in Lyubertsy, Moscow region, majoring in "moulder-foundry". At the same years he attended evening school for working youth, and in 1951 he graduated from the 7th form. He was still learning to be a foundry person, although his favorite subjects were physics and mathematics.
From 1951 to 1955 he was a student of the Saratov Industrial College in specialty "Foundry", he received a diploma with honours.
During his fourth and final year of school, he joined a local flying club, so from September 4, 1954 and till October 1, 1955 he was engaged in the Saratov Regional Aeroclub. His first flight as a passenger, he later wrote in Road to the Stars, “gave meaning to my whole life”. He quickly mastered flying, consumed by a new determination to become a fighter pilot.
He graduated from the K.E. Voroshilov’s 1st Chkalovsky WAUL, Orenburg, South-Ural Military District in 1957. From September 1, 1961 to March 2, 1968 he was enrolled in the Zhukovsky Institute of Aeronautical Engineering, where he began a five-year course leading to a degree. On 17 February 1968, he defended his thesis and received the Academy’s diploma.
After graduation from the technical school he joined the Soviet Air Force. Around this time the launch of Sputnik (the first artificial satellite sent into space) occurred on October 4, 1957, while he pursued his military and flight training.
On 9 December 1959, Gagarin completed a formal application for cosmonaut training and within a week he was summoned to Moscow to pass a full medical check-up to approve his physical fitness for the space flight.
He followed closely news of other Sputnik launches; although there had been no official announcement, Gagarin guessed that preparations for manned flights would soon begin and he volunteered for cosmonaut duty. Gagarin completed the required weeks of physical examinations and testing in 1960, just before his twenty-sixth birthday. On 3 March 1960 Gagarin was admitted to the cosmonaut candidate group and on 11 March the training sessions started in Zvezdny Gorodok (Star City), a newly built holding and training area in a suburb of Moscow. He was then told that he had been made a member of the first group of twelve cosmonauts. The assignment was a secret, and he was forbidden to tell even his wife until his family had settled into the new space-program complex called Zvezdniy Gorodok (Star Town), forty miles from Moscow. Sergei Korolyov, head of the Soviet space program and chief designer of its vehicles, thought Gagarin had the makings of a first-rate scientist and engineer, as well as being an excellent pilot.
The training course lasted a year. The group was introduced to a bewildering curriculum of space navigation, rocket propulsion, physiology, astronomy and upper atmospheric physics; the candidates received training in soundproof and decompression chambers, centrifuges and other special devices to accustom them to the physiological stress of space flight. More to Gagarin's liking however, were the long hours spent in the mock-up of the Vostok, an exact replica of the spacecraft in which he would later orbit the earth. In March of 1961, Korolyov approved the selection of Gagarin to ride Vostok I into orbit. After nine months of training the cosmonauts were told that the first flight of the Vostok was scheduled for 12 April 1961.
Senior Lieutenant Gagarin made history on April 12, 1961, when a converted ballistic missile propelled his Vostok capsule into Earth orbit from the remote Baikonur Cosmodrome. “Off we go!” the cosmonaut exclaimed. The Vostok was controlled automatically, and Gagarin spent his time reporting observations of the Earth and his own condition. He performed such tasks as writing and tapping out a message on a telegraph key, thus establishing that a human being’s coordination remained intact even while weightless in space.
Proving that people could work in space, he also ate and drank to verify that the body would take nourishment in weightlessness. He commented repeatedly on the beauty of the earth from space and on how pleasant weightlessness felt.
Gagarin rode his spacecraft for 108 minutes, ejecting from the spherical reentry module after the craft reentered the atmosphere just short of one complete orbit. Ejection was standard procedure for all Vostok pilots, although Gagarin dutifully supported the official fiction that he had remained in his craft all the way to the ground—a requirement for international certification of the flight as a record.
Because of a breakdown in the retrosystem, the descending craft with Gagarin onboard missed the assigned landing site in the Stalingrad (now Volgograd) Region, landing in the Saratov Region instead, where no one was expecting such a high-ranking guest. The radar on a nearby military air base detected an unknown target at 10:48 am. Gagarin ejected from the spacecraft at an altitude of over four miles, parachuting into a field near Saratov. The first people to meet the hero cosmonaut were a forester’s wife, Anna Akimova, and her six-year-old daughter, Rita. Soon the local military unit, who’d detected Gagarin on the radar, arrived. In the meantime, in the town of Engels a helicopter was sent to meet Gagarin, catching up with him, as he was traveling to the city on truck. The chopper picked him up and delivered him to the city.
Upon arriving in the city of Engels, Gagarin was handed a personal telegram from the Kremlin, met with the journalists, posed for cameras and gave interviews. Once the connection was set up, Gagarin reported to Khrushchev and Brezhnev about the details of the first flight. From Engels, Gagarin was transported to the city of Samara, and, though all measures had been taken to make the arrival as discreet as possible, by the time the plane landed, there were hundreds of people waiting for their hero, along with the local authorities.
Gagarin had meetings with Sergey Korolev and other officials who had flown from Moscow to greet him. Excited though they were, the cosmonaut and the delegation, too exhausted after the sleepless nights of preparation and training, couldn’t carry on with the conversation and fell asleep shortly after the meeting started.
Originally, no one planned a pompous festivity upon Gagarin’s return to Moscow, but Nikita Khrushchev was determined to make things right. First, he called the defense minister and ordered him to promote Gagarin to the rank of major, as he deemed it inappropriate to keep the man who had flown into space a lieutenant. Though very reluctant, the minister was nevertheless forced to submit to the leader’s will. Then Khrushchev called the Kremlin and told them to have a decent reception for Gagarin.
On 20 December 1963, Gagarin was appointed Deputy Training Director of the Cosmonaut Training Center, a position he held until April 1965, upon returning to Star City. He served as capsule communicator—the link between cosmonauts and ground controllers—for four later space flights in the Vostok and Voskhod programs. At the cosmonaut facility, Gagarin also worked on designs for a reusable spacecraft for about seven consecutive years.
At various times during this period, he also held political duties; chaired the Soviet-Cuban Friendship Society and served on the Council of the Union, and the Supreme Soviet Council of Nationalities.
Gagarin always wanted to venture back to space, and in 1966 he was returned to active status to serve as the backup cosmonaut to Vladimir Komarov for the first flight of the new Soyuz spacecraft. When the Soyuz 1 mission ended and Komarov died due to a parachute malfunction, Gagarin was assigned to command the upcoming Soyuz 3. But Gagarin himself did not live to fly the Soyuz 3 mission.
On March 27, 1968, he took off for a routine proficiency flight in a two-seat MiG-15 trainer. He and his flight instructor became engaged in low-level maneuvers with two other jets. Gagarin’s plane crossed close behind another jet and was caught in its vortex; he lost control and the jet crashed into the tundra at high speed, killing both occupants instantly.
Gagarin was given a hero’s funeral. The cosmonaut training center was renamed in his honor, as were his former hometown, a space tracking ship, and a lunar crater. His wife continued to work as a biomedical laboratory assistant at Zvezdniy Gorodok, and Gagarin’s office there was preserved as a museum. His book Survival in Space was published posthumously. Written with space-program physician Vladimir Lebedev, the work outlines Gagarin’s views on the problems and requirements for successful long-term space flights.
Achievements
He received an instant promotion to the rank of major and made appearances around the world. He was named a Hero of the Soviet Union and a Hero of Socialist Labor, and he became an honorary citizen of fourteen cities in six countries. He received the Tsiolkovsky Gold Medal of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the Gold Medal of the British Interplanetary Society, and two awards from the International Aeronautical Federation. The flight had many implications for international affairs: American leaders extended cautious congratulations and redoubled their own efforts in the space race, while the Soviet media proclaimed that Gagarin’s success showed the strength of socialism.
Gagarin became commander of the cosmonaut team.
He was named a Hero of the Soviet Union and a Hero of Socialist Labor. He became an honorary citizen of fourteen cities in six countries. He was also awarded the golden keys to the gates of the Egyptian cities Cairo and Alexandria.
A huge statue of Gagrin was erected in Moscow.
Politics
Gagarin joined the Communist Party around the time that he volunteered for service in the Northern Air Fleet.
Views
After the flight, Gagarin became an instant, worldwide celebrity, touring widely with appearances in Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Canada and Japan to promote the popularity of the Soviet Union in a so-called Mission of Peace, which lasted for about two years. Meeting with him was considered a great honor for kings, presidents, political figures, and artists all around the globe. Though handling the publicity with certain grace and professionalism in general, Gagarin still had a very hard time resisting the stardom disease – a feat in his case a lot more challenging than the flight. During that period, Gagarin, though wanting to fly but having no chance to do so, was said to suffer mental disturbances.
Membership
He was a member of the Soviet-Cuban Friendship Society and an Honorary Member of the Finland-Soviet Union Society.
Personality
He was an outgoing and a natural leader. The stocky, smiling Gagarin stood out even among his well-qualified peers.
Physical Characteristics:
Quotes from others about the person
Cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky wrote: "Service in the Air Force made us strong, both physically and morally. All of us cosmonauts took up sports and PT seriously when we served in the Air Force. I know that Yuri Gagarin was fond of ice hockey. He liked to play goal keeper... I don't think I am wrong when I say that sports became a fixture in the life of the cosmonauts."
In August 1960, when Gagarin was one of 20 possible candidates, a Soviet Air Force doctor evaluated his personality as follows:
"Modest; embarrasses when his humor gets a little too racy; high degree of intellectual development evident in Yuriy; fantastic memory; distinguishes himself from his colleagues by his sharp and far-ranging sense of attention to his surroundings; a well-developed imagination; quick reactions; persevering, prepares himself painstakingly for his activities and training exercises, handles celestial mechanics and mathematical formulae with ease as well as excels in higher mathematics; does not feel constrained when he has to defend his point of view if he considers himself right; appears that he understands life better than a lot of his friends."
Connections
Gagarin met Valentina Ivanovna Goryacheva, a medical technician graduate of the Orenburg Medical School. They were married on 7 November 1957, the same day Gagarin graduated from Orenburg.
They had two daughters.
Father:
Alexei Ivanovich Gagarin
Mother:
Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina
Spouse:
Valentina Ivanovna Goryacheva
Daughter:
Helena Gagarina
References
Yuri Gagarin and the Race to Space (Adventures in Space)
Join Yuri Gagarin on his journey into space! This book examines the extraordinary life of the first astronaut in space, from his early life to his first trip aboard a Russian spacecraft. Discover what the space race was and other developments happening at the time.
Yuri Gagarin: The First Man in Space (Space Firsts)
Yuri Gagarin was a Soviet pilot when he was selected for the prestigious cosmonaut training program. Little did he know that in April 1961, he would become the first man to orbit Earth.
Yuri Gagarin: First Man in Space
A biography of the Russian cosmonaut who was the first man to leave earth and to orbit the planet in a spacecraft on April 12, 1961.
The First Man in Space (Days That Changed the World)
Describes the 1961 flight of Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, as well as the scientific background to that flight and space exploration since then.
Gagarin in Britain
Gagarin in Britain [Piers Bizony] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers.
