1957–1969: Opening the Space Age
Vostok 1
Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space and in orbit.
Era 1 of 6 · full record in the catalog
- Launch
- 12 Apr 1961
- Lead / partner
- Soviet Union
- Target
- Earth orbit
- Category
- Human spaceflight
- Status
- Success
- Vehicle
- unknown
- Mass
- unknown
- Orbit / trajectory
- unknown
Why it happened
Vostok 1 flew during 1957–1969: Opening the Space Age, as part of Soviet Union's work toward earth orbit. A sourced write-up of the context around this mission is still on the editorial queue; nothing here is invented to fill the gap.
The mission
On 12 April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, completing a single orbit of Earth aboard Vostok 1 in 108 minutes. He ejected and parachuted separately from the capsule during descent, per Soviet spacecraft design at the time, though this detail was concealed for years to satisfy record-keeping rules requiring the pilot land with the craft.
Results
Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space and in orbit.
Related missions
Sources & image credits
- Tempe, via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · license: public-domain (source, checked 2026-08-24)
- Mission record: AntarikshPedia canonical dataset (data-sources/missions_timeline.md)
- Specifications reference: NASA NSSDCA Master Catalog
