The Soviets were not the only ones blinking with disbelief at this. He excelled as an aviator, and while, as Walker recounted, the head of the Vostok training program exclaimed, "All six cosmonauts are terrific guys," Gagarin led the field from the moment he arrived for training. Neil Armstrong was the first to step on the MOON! That is why, it has long since been claimed, Ilyushin's feat was cast aside in favor of Gagarin's successful launch and landing. Gagarin: First in Space is a Russian film directed by Pavel Parkhomenko, about the life of Yuri Gagarin who, in 1961 became first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth. Kennedy then. Please deactivate your ad blocker in order to see our subscription offer. It was released by Central Partnership theatrically in Russia on June 6, 2013, and in the United Kingdom on DVD on June 23, 2014 by Entertainment One. He lived to tell the claimed tale, but notably did not. The first was from May 1960 of a manned spacecraft reportedly going off-course; the second in November that year of an SOS Morse code from a troubled spacecraft leaving Earth's orbit and, most chillingly, a third in 1961 of a cosmonaut apparently suffocating to death. This might seem to be a very reasonable argument, but Gagarin remains the first man in space. The justification for Gagarin remaining in that position lies in the organization that sets the standards for flight. To that end, his son would have been seen as the perfect person to send into space, his penchant for risk-taking such that the then-34-year-old pilot would have surely relished the task. On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin performed the first space flight in the history of mankind. Indeed, Pierre Salinger, the press secretary to the White House at the time, told reporters that there was no evidence of a flight on April 7 and, we have to assume, nothing to have raised suspicion in March either. Khrushchev's answer came 60 years ago, on April 12, 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin circled the Earth aboard a spacecraft called Vostok 1. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space Meanwhile, Ilyushin himself — who died in 2010, aged 82 — never confessed to having flown into space. At a meeting with Secretary of State Dean Rusk and others on April 12, Kennedy had stressed he wanted the invasion to be a Cuban operation as much as possible, and the CIA assured him that the rebels were up to the job. Which technology is the best? Vezi Gagarin: First in Space – Gagarin: Primul în cosmos (2013) • Pentru a vedea acest film pe site-ul nostru, alege unul din serverele de mai sus, dai play si stop in acelasi timp apoi asteapta in jur de 15 minute (depinde de ce internet ai) si te poti uita fara intreruperi, simplu si gratis. The CIA reported, accurately, to President Dwight Eisenhower that thanks to Korolev's powerful fleet of intercontinental missiles, the Soviets would be ready to put a satellite into space by 1958. Gagarin spent 108 minutes strapped into his … Tech & Science Space exploration Computers Space Russia Sixty years ago today, on April 12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made history by becoming the first human to travel into space . All of that turned out to be true, all the more so when NASA beat Kennedy's schedule by 164 days and, on July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong, accompanied by Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, piloted the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle to the surface of the Moon. And yet, before he even embarked on his journey skywards, doubt was seeded in many a person's mind. His orbit, which lasted for, He also had only the vaguest idea of where he was when he came back to Earth, at one point crossing over a corner of Antarctica before finally parachuting out over a collective farm like the one of his childhood. These are the benefits of space exploration, Watch SpaceX land its Mars rocket prototype for the first time, Astronauts splash down after record-setting mission, Elon Musk taunts Jeff Bezos over NASA contract, Astronauts welcome new crew aboard the ISS, See SpaceX rocket launch to International Space Station, Watch the Ingenuity helicopter's first flight on Mars, Watch yet another SpaceX prototype explode, NASA releases stunning new images from Mars, Watch SpaceX Mars prototype rocket nail landing, explode on pad, Watch the Perseverance rover's first footage of Mars, Meet the 29-year-old cancer survivor set to make history in space, 'A dream come true': NASA scientist on Mars rover landing, Watch SpaceX's Mars rocket prototype crash land... again, Why NASA calls landing the Mars rover '7 minutes of terror', This is how the human heart adapts to space, Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space, NASA's Artemis program will land the first person of color on the moon, Astronaut artifacts on moon -- like Apollo landers and Neil Armstrong's bootprint -- now protected by US law. Neither could they offer up a suitable explanation for why he might have been in China. After all, Alan Shepard paved the way for American astronauts on May 5, 1961, while Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin stole a march by rocketing into Earth orbit a few weeks earlier on April 12. Ogden's article could have been seen as something akin to a correction; confirmation that he was initially wrong about the flight on April 7. The Soviets didn't help themselves in this regard either since they couldn't give a straight answer about the reason why he was seen to be injured — pinned down to that car crash — or when it actually took place. New York, NY 10036. And so the story went that his journey outwards on board his spaceship was fine but, after three supposed orbits, Ilyushin's return went awry. In 1980 the West finally learned of the death of Valentin Bondarenko, who according to The New York Times, died ten days into a 15-day low-pressure endurance experiment in Moscow in 1961 when fire broke out — even though they had removed his image from an official subsequent training photograph. Ogden would later claim that he saw a photograph of Ilyushin wearing space gear at the time of the supposed flight, but it has never subsequently surfaced. Two Italian former amateur radio operators, Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia, claimed to have recorded audio from an orbiting capsule in the days before Gagarin made his flight, and it was actually the fourth slice of startling audio released by the pair. Space is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. What could be made of claims by Mikhail Rudenko, a former Soviet senior engineer and experimenter with Experimental Design Office 456, formed in 1999 by members of the editorial staff of the oldest Soviet paper Pravda, that cosmonauts had been sent into space in 1957, 1958 and 1959? He would confirm his suspicion toward the end of the month, when Cuban rebels bankrolled by the agency invaded their Communist-held homeland. The Vostok rocket was the brainchild of Soviet engineer. Had another cosmonaut beaten Gagarin to the punch and journeyed into space to circle the Earth? Most are also aware that he wasn't the first to go into space. One of the most notable was a 52-minute documentary in 1999 called "The Cosmonaut Cover-Up", released by Global Science Productions and directed by Elliott Haimoff who, in the following year, also helmed "Vladimir Ilyushin: The Real First Man in Space". And that sounds more plausible. Apparently, his landing was off-course, causing him physical harm and mental anguish. David Crookes , On April 12, 1961, Gagarin was launched into orbit by a Vostok rocket and became the first man in space. Besides, supposing Russia had suffered such terrible space attempts which resulted in deaths and crashes, would it really have announced Gagarin's flight in the way it did? Some journalists believed the claims of a car crash were a mere cover story, and it certainly wasn't beyond the wildest of imaginations to believe the Soviets would seek to bury a mistake since it had been done so many times in the past. Первый в космосе) is a 2013 Russian docudrama biopic about the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, and the 1961 mission of Vostok 1. They also went as far as to say he was never actually a cosmonaut and, indeed, it would appear that he wasn't in the original cosmonaut team. (CNN)President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was having a rough time of it in April 1961. Harder still to determine is Ilyushin's location in March and April 1961. "The space vessel reportedly was recovered where expected, but Ilyushin was mentally unbalanced and is unconscious in a Moscow hospital," said a report in The Spokesman Review about the journalist's claims on April 12, 1961. Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for Movies & TV. Gagarin: First in Space – Full movie and Review. If it was worried about the potential for bad news, wouldn't it have been better to wait until the mission was over and Gagarin's feet were firmly back on the ground, rather than risk Gagarin's spacecraft hitting the same problems as the one claimed to have taken place just days before? Gagarin: First in Space a.k.a.. First man In Space (Russian: Гагарин. Related: 25 Space Conspiracies That Just Won't Die. But given the supposition was that everyone involved in those three recordings had died, discovering the truth has been even more difficult. ", Johnson conferred with NASA, returning with a projected price tag of $20 billion. Dennis Ogden, the Moscow-based correspondent for the British Communist Party newspaper, Daily Worker, reported as such, his story splashed across the publication's front page with the headline: "The First Man In Space". In office for less than three months, Kennedy was facing down what he and his advisers suspected to be an untrustworthy Central Intelligence Agency. In his inaugural address in January, he made an overture to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, inviting the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to join the United States in "exploring the stars.". "The cosmonauts were to reach space heights in the highest point of such an orbit and then return to the Earth," he added. The film's running time of 108 minutes approximates the time it took Gagarin to go around the Earth before returning. Get breaking space news and the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more! The Soviet Union claimed Ilyushin was in hospital being treated for injuries he had received in a car accident. Given that the documentary was being made a number of years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when secrets were finally being divulged and historical events were being flung open, many would suspect not. Menu . All About Space magazine All About Space magazine takes you on an awe-inspiring journey through our solar system and beyond, from the amazing technology and spacecraft that enables humanity to venture into orbit, to the complexities of space science. By All returned alive, after which Korolev extended his "biological materials" to include humans. In fact, the Soviets began to open up well before the U.S.S.R. ceased to be. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets But in August 1960, one of Korolev's new generation of rockets lifted off with two dogs, 40 mice, a rabbit, a pair of rats, and a bottle full of fruit flies -- and this menagerie orbited Earth 18 times. And all this is despite the fact that the story of the first … Yuri Gagarin, First Human in Space. On April 12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (left, on the way to the launch pad) made the first human spaceflight, a 108 … He was the cosmonaut who was selected from over three thousand fighter pilots throughout the Soviet Union. Gagarine - First in Space, un film de Pavel Parkhomenko It stars Yaroslav Zhalnin as Sovietfighter pil… Presented as a triumph of the fiercely fought Space Race against the U.S., the 27 year old, who had been chosen just three days before the mission, spent 108 minutes in space, orbited the Earth and returned fit and well following a drama-filled flight. Yet it's also difficult to corroborate the Judica-Cordiglia recordings with any data from official sources. After parachuting from the craft near the Russian village of Smelovka, Gagarin landed a hero — and a major embarrassment for the United States, already stung by the Soviet first-in-the-race launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite four years earlier. Nous utilisons des cookies et des outils similaires pour faciliter vos achats, fournir nos services, pour comprendre comment les clients utilisent nos services afin de pouvoir apporter des améliorations, et pour présenter des publicités, y compris des publicités basées sur les … This plaque was presented to the U.S.S.R. on Jan. 21, 1971, by NASA's acting administrator George M. Low in memory of Yuri Gagarin. Space Mysteries: Before the cosmonaut orbited the Earth, rumors abounded that someone else already had. The article adds that Bobrovsky said his information came from reliable sources that he could not name and that Russian officers denied the report. The result, a week later, was the Bay of Pigs fiasco, a military and political disaster that would only embolden Fidel Castro and his chief benefactor, the Soviet Union. On that day in 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (left, on the way to the launch pad) became the first human in space, making a 108-minute orbital flight in … What Really Happened to Yuri Gagarin, the First Man in Space? The tale of the first man to do so, Yuri Gagarin is a story of triumph Fame a sad demise. In Photos: Yuri Gagarin, First Man in Space The Soviet Union denied the reports and instead alerted the press to Gagarin's subsequent feat. > First Spaceman - YURI GAGARIN > Vostok 1 ~ 12 April 1961 > First Space Women - VALENTINE TERESHKOVA ~ 16 June 1963 > First Spaceman Walk - ALEXIA KEONOV ~ 18 March 1965 > "The Chief Designer" - SERGEI KOROLEV ~ 1907~1965 Yes, we all know APOLLO 13 with Tom Hank !!! Credit: Getty Images It’s been 60 years, to the day, since Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first … Kennedy reversed an earlier round of budget-cutting, first extracting NASA's assurance that an American would be on the Moon by 1970. Yuri Gagarin (March 9, 1934–March 27, 1968) made history on April 12, 1961, when he became both the first person in the world to enter space and the first person to orbit the Earth. Space.com reports: 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 … On October 4, 1957, humans would send an object into space for the first time in history. Although he never again went to space, his achievement was one of the most significant events of the "space race" which eventually saw men land on the moon. And yet there have been some peculiar pieces of "evidence". "I am the first spaceman in the world, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin. Yuri Gagarin: First Man in Space April 12 was already a huge day in space history twenty years before the launch of the first shuttle mission. Or did he? North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), Vladimir Ilyushin: The Real First Man in Space, Aliens forced Americans out from the Moon, Boba Fett takes on the galaxy in Marvel Comics' bold new series 'Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters', SpaceX's Star Wars Day launch puts 60 Starlink satellites in orbit, lands rocket, Watch live: SpaceX rocket launching 60 Starlink satellites today, Hasbro's new animatronic Baby Yoda eats snacks, uses the Force and coos. Lovell paid visits to Russia around this time, and there have even been allegations that he was brainwashed. Updated 1403 GMT (2203 HKT) April 12, 2021. Cosmonaut yuri gagarin during last minute checks of vostok i control systems before launch, 1961. > First Spaceman - YURI GAGARIN > Vostok 1 ~ 12 April 1961 > First Space Women - VALENTINE TERESHKOVA ~ 16 June 1963 > First Spaceman Walk - ALEXIA KEONOV ~ 18 March 1965 > "The Chief Designer" - SERGEI KOROLEV ~ 1907~1965 Yes, we all know APOLLO 13 with Tom Hank !!! The flight lasted 108 minutes. And some very peculiar events to understand what happened. Gagarin was feted, celebrated and put up in the finest hotels the country could offer. Listening stations did not pick up on what they claimed to have committed to tape, and radio astronomer Bernard Lovell, who established the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, England, dismissed claims of earlier Russian manned space attempts in 1963. There was even a suggestion that the accident had put him into a coma. North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) space tracking stations, it transpired, had not picked up on anything, and the U.S. was not about to leap in and heap embarrassment on the Soviet Union without proof. There was a problem. Gagarin's feet hadn't even left the ground when the paper hit the newsstands, and it caused something of a stir, sparking the first whispers of a conspiracy theory which has continued to this day. Yuri Gagarin was the first person to fly in space. The widow of Yuri Gagarin, the first human to fly to space, has died at the age of 84. Regardez la bande annonce du film Gagarine - First in Space (Gagarine - First in Space Bande-annonce VO). But considering Pravda has also run with headlines such as "Aliens forced Americans out from the Moon'' and "Alien and human skulls found on Mars", it's a tough call. The two men who would have been directly involved are no longer alive — Gagarin was killed when the MiG-15 training jet he was piloting crashed on March 27, 1968, when he was 34. You will receive a verification email shortly. As James E. Oberg points out in a 1975 article he wrote in Space World magazine, the Russian news agency TASS — frequently used as a front organisation by the Soviet intelligence agency — released its first bulletin while Gagarin was still in-flight. One of the cosmonauts was a former fighter pilot named. © Even the Americans did not believe the journalists' claims. Maybe we will never know. Experience going to space together with Gagarin! After completing one orbit, the spacecraft's automatic controls brought him safely back to Earth. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! "All three pilots died during the flights and their names were never officially published," he is quoted as saying in an article published on pravda.ru on April 12, 2001, having explained that the pilots involved were called Ledovskikh, Shaborin and Mitkov and took part in sub-orbital flights. Related: From Yuri Gagarin's launch to today, human spaceflight has always been political. The American astronauts in the competing Mercury program may have joked about being "Spam in a can," but it seems clear that Korolev wanted to have plenty of cosmonauts on hand in case another rocket blew up. Yuri Gagarin was hailed a hero upon his return from space, pictured here in Warsaw, Poland. His flight, on April 12, 1961, lasted 108 minutes as he circled the Earth for a little more than one orbit in the Soviet Union’s Vostok spacecraft. Kennedy blamed the Soviets for his bad April. Future US, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor, Yuri Gagarin belied the West’s austere impression of the Soviet Union – a charming, easygoing Russian with a ready smile. Sixty years ago this week, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to pierce Earth’s atmosphere and safely reach space. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to journey into outer space. Amazon.fr: gagarine first in space. Gagarin waves to crowds who have come to see him at the Soviet exhibition at London's Earls Court, July 11, 1961. The Soviets were ahead of schedule by three months. On April 12 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space. Thank you for signing up to Space. Four months after Gagarin's spaceflight on Vostok 1, cosmonaut, Meanwhile, a frustrated John Kennedy, realizing that the United States would have to find another event in the space race in which to compete, sent a memo to his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, asking, "Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man? Ilyushin senior had also earned himself a place in government. Nothing less than control of the heavens was at stake.". Please refresh the page and try again. Gregory McNamee writes about books, science, food, geography and many other topics from his home in Arizona. Visit our corporate site. Gagarine - First in Space streaming vf Le mercredi 12 avril 1961, pour la première fois, un homme voyage dans l’espace. Rumors circulated that Yuri Gagarin, pictured here being suited up for flight, died in a psychiatric ward in 1990. Gagarine - First in Space est un film réalisé par Pavel Parkhomenko avec Yaroslav Zhalnin, Mikhail Filippov. And yet, even this wasn't enough to completely quell suspicion. And with Sputnik, as Tom Wolfe wrote in his frenetic classic of the space race, "The Right Stuff," "a colossal panic was underway, with congressmen and newspapermen leading a huge pack that was baying at the sky where the hundred-pound Soviet satellite kept beeping around the world. Gagarine First.In.Space.2013.TRUEFRENCH.720p.BluRay.DTS.x264-oo0oo It was the smile that clinched it. Enter Yuri Gagarin, who ticked all the boxes: He was the son of a carpenter who grew up on a collective farm and had survived the Nazi occupation — though, it would emerge, he was traumatized by the experience, which included the attempted execution of his 5-year-old brother. And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com. Today Gagarin's name is cemented in the record books, and he instantly became a national hero across the Soviet Union. The documentary makers said Ilyushin wouldn't talk about the alleged incidents on camera, according to an article published on Sun Community News, and preferred to maintain his secrecy. If only for his part in spurring on the space race 60 years ago, Yuri Gagarin deserves some credit for that transformative moment, too. Gagarin: First in Space”) “The filmmakers of “Gagarin” managed to do next to impossible: they made the audience worry about and go through the fate of the first cosmonaut, to applaud “Vostok” spaceship taking off and safe landing in a field near Saratov. Should these be hard-and-fast evidence of spaceflights, then we would have to say that not only was Gagarin not the first person into space, Ilyushin was perhaps not first either. He was selected from over 3,000 fighter pilots throughout the Soviet Union. ", Khrushchev crowed about the Soviet victory over his capitalist rival. Russia's space agency Roscosmos announced Valentina … Given the evidence that has been made available, the smart money remains on Gagarin having been the first person on a manned spaceflight Russian space history can be murky and difficult to pick apart, but in truth there is no real reason to lie in instances such as this. Nouveauté Films SD The race is on. Sixty years ago today, Yuri Gagarin became the first human ever in space. Neil Armstrong was the first to step on the MOON! Test pilot Vladimir Ilyushin has been rumored to be the first man in space. With Yaroslav Zhalnin, Mikhail Filippov, Olga Ivanova, Vadim Michman. No memoirs or declassified information put him there. He fell ill that year following such a trip, and the U.K. Ministry of Defence said it might have been due to an attempt to remove his memory of a Soviet offer to build a telescope facility in the U.S.S.R. His son says he was merely ill from exhaustion, according to an article published in February’s edition of Physics World magazine. Finally allowed to return to active service after spending time as a delegate to the Supreme Soviet, he died in 1968 in what authorities described as a ". He began screening Soviet military pilots, thousands of them. Related: Russia's next space station-bound Soyuz spacecraft named for first cosmonaut. After completing one orbit, the spacecraft's automatic controls … And yet, before he even embarked on his journey skywards, doubt was seeded in many a … This article is brought to you by All About Space. But is that, together with unknown journalistic sources, reason enough to believe that Gagarin's place in history was not quite what it was? Widely broadcast, it claimed Ilyushin had failed to eject from his capsule, crashed in China and, after being captured, was eventually handed back to the U.S.S.R. in 1962. It took longer to tell the world of a major launchpad accident that took place on Oct. 24, 1960, and officially killed 78, as eventually revealed to the rest of the world in 1989. Ogden also reported this, his article again making the splash as he wrote of a "hero's welcome" and a Soviet Union "wild with joy at [the] first trip outside this world". Related: Are we really in a new space race with China and Russia? But was Ilyushin so fearful that, in verifying such claims, he would open himself up to a world in which he did not wish to boldly go? He had broken many speed and altitude records and his father was influential, having designed and built Second World War fighters and bombers. What has been seen, however, are rumours continuing to swirl long after the event, and they've even been fleshed out. The front page of The Huntsville Times newspaper documented the historic moment. The mannequin, jokingly called Ivan Ivanovich, and a dog called Zvezdochka, performed their first space flight on 21 March 1961, paving the way for the triumph of Yuri Gagarin… What's more, in the framework of the Space Race, conspiracists could surmise there was a valid reason for trying to bury such a failure: the Soviets would constantly pull out all the stops to present communism as the superior ideology. And yet theories still mount up. For rumors had surfaced that the Soviets had successfully launched a man into space before Gagarin set foot in Vostok 1, and the talk was that one cosmonaut had done so on April 7, just five days earlier. His courageous feat took place on April 12, 1961, when a young soviet officer circled (around) the Earth for a little more than one orbit aboard the Vostok spacecraft. He had a long history of lofting dogs into the sky on massive rockets that had an unfortunate tendency to explode on liftoff. Ilyushin was a Soviet general and a test pilot of high standing. Gagarin had gone to trade school, earning top marks, before joining the Soviet Air Force and undergoing pilot training. In Photos: Yuri Gagarin, First Man in Space Related: 25 Space Conspiracies That Just Won't Die. Trouble is, this mission had — according to the press sources — not gone quite as well as planned. Directed by Pavel Parkhomenko. There's talk of Gagarin being used for propaganda, but of all the confessions and documents seen since the Soviet Union collapsed, Ilyushin has never featured. Yuri Gagarin was the first man on Earth to fly into outer space. It informed readers that the spaceman — "the test-pilot son of a top-ranking aircraft designer" — was "back alive, but suffering from [the] effects of his flight". The first man in space became a powerful propaganda tool. But then French journalist Eduard Bobrovsky followed up on Ogden's claims and pointed to the man in question as being an accomplished test pilot called Vladimir Ilyushin, while also stating the flight actually took place on March 25. On April 12, 1961—55 years ago today—Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin launched into the great beyond, becoming the first human in space.When he came back to Earth, Gagarin … Extreme Download Tag Gagarine - First in Space Uptobox. It helped, of course, that he was Russian. The Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 became the first artificial object to be put in orbit. Even that, however, isn't as clear cut as it sounds. (Photo by: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images). Who will be the first? Lonely amid all the hubbub, he drank heavily and unhappily. 12 April 2021. Yuri Gagarin trains in the Vostok spacecraft in November 1960, five months before his historic flight. Everybody knows that Neil Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the moon. On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Gagarin blasted off in a Vostok rocket and he orbited Earth for 108 minutes. "Boys, let's be acquainted," he told the astonished farmers he encountered. So it was that on April 12, 1961, Vostok 1 lifted Yuri Gagarin into space, the first human being to travel there. Emboldened by the success of Sputnik, Korolev asked Khrushchev for permission to send "biological materials" into space. Gagarine - First in Space regarder et télécharger HD Quality Le mercredi 12 avril 1961, pour la première fois, un homme voyage dans l’espace. The first cadre of Soviet space explorers gathered together numbered 20. The Vostok-K (8K72K) rocket carried Gagarin and the Vostok 1 spacecraft to orbital altitude. On April 12, 1961, Gagarin was launched into orbit by a Vostok rocket and became the first man in space.