However, some of the cables failed to release as they should. The capsule whirled uncontrollably and the interior temperature rose, meaning Gagarin nearly lost consciousness and barely managed to eject out of the capsule as planned.
He eventually parachute d down safely from an attitude of 7km. Legend has it that he landed on a field and was found by farmer Anna Takhtarova who had watched his shocking descent. Soviet cosmonaut selection criteria were a little different to those used today.
Firstly, his size. Gagarin was so short that he used a cushion on his seat when he flew his fighter jet in order to see better. Colonel Yuri A. Gagarin was born on a collective farm in a region west of Moscow, Russia on March 9, His father was a carpenter. Yuri attended the local school for six years and continued his education at vocational and technical schools.
Soon afterward, he became a military fighter pilot. By , he had been selected for cosmonaut training as part of the first group of USSR cosmonauts.
Yuri Gagarin flew only one space mission. On April 12, he became the first human to orbit Earth. After the test flight, the Soviet's considered the vessel fit to take a human into space.
The third of four children, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was born on March 9, , in a small village a hundred miles from Moscow. As a teenager, Gagarin witnessed a Russian Yak fighter plane make an emergency landing near his home.
When offered a chance years later to join a flying club, he eagerly accepted, making his first solo flight in Only a few years later, he submitted his request to be considered as a cosmonaut.
More than Russian Air Force fighter pilots were selected as cosmonaut candidates. Such pilots were considered optimal because they had exposure to the forces of acceleration and the ejection process, as well as experience with high-stress situations. Gagarin, a year-old senior lieutenant at the time, was among the pilots selected. On April 12, , at a. Moscow time, the Vostok 1 spacecraft blasted off from the Soviets' launch site.
Because no one was certain how weightlessness would affect a pilot, the spherical capsule had little in the way of onboard controls; the work was done either automatically or from the ground. If an emergency arose , Gagarin was supposed to receive an override code that would allow him to take manual control, but Sergei Korolev, chief designer of the Soviet space program, disregarded protocol and gave the code to the pilot prior to the flight.
Over the course of minutes, Vostok 1 traveled around the Earth once, reaching a maximum height of miles kilometers. The spacecraft carried 10 days' worth of provisions in case the engines failed and Gagarin was required to wait for the orbit to naturally decay.
But the supplies were unnecessary. Gagarin re-entered Earth's atmosphere, managing to maintain consciousness as he experienced forces up to eight times the pull of gravity during his descent. Vostok 1 had no engines to slow its re-entry and no way to land safely. About 4 miles 7 km up, Gagarin ejected from the spacecraft and parachuted to Earth.
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