On April 12, 1961 the first earthling escaped the gravity well of planet earth.

In the spaceship Vostok 1, Senior Lieutenant Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin orbited earth one time at an altitude of 187 3/4 miles (302 kilometres) for 108 minutes at 18,000 miles an hour. He was the first man to orbit the earth in an artificial satellite and thus ushered in the age of manned spaceflight.

He was born on March 9, 1934 in Klushino, a small village 100 miles west of Moscow. His father was a cabinetmaker, carpenter, bricklayer, and farmer, and his mother was a milkmaid. Together they worked on a kolkhoz or collective farm. He was the third of four children.

When he was a teenager, he witnessed a Russian Yak fighter plane make a forced landing in a field near his home. It was just returning from battle, its wings bullet-ridden.

When the pilots emerged covered in medals, he was so impressed:  "We understood immediately the price that had to be paid for military decorations. We boys all wanted to be brave and handsome pilots. We experienced strange feelings such as we had never known before.”

He completed six grades of secondary school where he studied mathematics, his favourite subject, and physics, then went to a trade school where he became a foundry-man. At the same time he read the works of the Russian rocket pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935).

After a year and a half at the trade school, he joined a four-year technical school in Saratov. In his fourth year at school he was offered the chance to join a Saratov flying club. And so began the realization of his dream to become a pilot. He took his first solo flight in 1955.

A Yuri Gagarin joined the Russian Air Force in 1955 and graduated with top-ranking honors from the Soviet Air Force Academy in 1957. Soon afterward, he became a military fighter pilot. By 1959, he had been selected for cosmonaut training as part of the first group of USSR cosmonauts.

Yuri was subjected to extremely rigorous training: physical, mental, and psychological. He underwent long periods in a sensory deprivation chamber, experiments with weightlessness, endurance in heat chambers, and test flights under stress with every reaction monitored.

One test was to solve difficult mathematical equations while a loudspeaker blasted out answers. He was calm, resolute and always had a sense of humor and he always finished at the top.

The selection of Gagarin as the first man to orbit earth was assured when each cosmonaut was asked to designate who should be the one to make the flight; 60 percent named Gagarin.

Chief Designer Korolev, the head of the Soviet space program and the man who had chosen the first cosmonaut, was especially fond of Yuri: "During the days of preparation for the launch, when everyone had more than his share of concerns, apprehensions, and anxieties, he alone seemed to keep calm. More than that: he was full of good spirits and beamed like the sun.”

Yuri Gagarin flew only one space mission. On April 12, 1961 he became the first human to orbit Earth. Once in orbit, Yuri Gagarin had no control over his spacecraft.

Vostok’s reentry was controlled by a computer program sending radio commands to the space capsule. Although the controls were locked, a key had been placed in a sealed envelope in case an emergency situation made it necessary for Gagarin to take control.

As was planned, Cosmonaut Gagarin ejected after reentry into Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of 20,000 feet and landed by parachute. As pilot of the spaceship Vostok 1, he proved that man could endure the rigors of lift-off, re-entry, and weightlessness.

As a result of his historic flight he became an international hero and legend. He embarked on a world tour with his wife Valya as an ambassador of good will.

And everywhere they travelled, Yuri was decorated with the highest honours. He became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet, always continued to help and advise his fellow cosmonauts, and was appointed Commander of the Cosmonauts’ Detachment.

On March 27, 1968, at age 34, Colonel Yuri Gagarin died when the MiG-15 airplane he was test piloting crashed near Moscow. His death was mourned by the world, as his ashes were buried alongside other Soviet heroes in the Kremlin Wall.

In honour of his great contributions to space exploration, a crater on the moon was named after him. At Baikonur, a reproduction of his training room is traditionally visited by space crews before a launch.

Russians celebrate Cosmonaut Day on April 12 every year in honour of Gagarin’s historic flight.Courtesy of the Russian embassy in Rwanda.

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