81 years since the birth of Yuri Gagarin

March 9, 1934, 81 years ago, in the city of Gzhatsk (in 1968 renamed Gagarin) was born pilot-cosmonaut Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin. Gagarin was the first in the history of mankind who made an orbital flight around the Earth.

The ship "Vostok-1" was launched by the Vostok 8K72K launch vehicle on April 12, 1961, today this date is Cosmonautics Day. For 108 minutes, the ship performed one revolution around the Earth, during which Gagarin conducted simple experiments in microgravity conditions. The descent from orbit passed along a ballistic trajectory with overloads of 8-10 units, but the problems were not limited to this. The valve in the spacesuit did not open immediately, and the landing could have happened in the cold water of the Volga. But Gagarin did not choke and took the parachute from the river.

After the flight, Gagarin did not leave the space program, although foreign trips began to take a lot of time (the first cosmonaut visited about 30 countries altogether) and political activities. Gagarin left a mark on the Soviet lunar program; he was a double of the tragically deceased Vladimir Komarov on Soyuz-1.
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On March 27, 1968, at the age of 34, Yuri Gagarin died while performing a training flight on a MiG-15UTI plane in a fleet with an instructor pilot Sergei Seryogin. The circumstances of the death of Gagarin raise some questions, but it is believed that the plane went into stall after a sharp maneuver. Gagarin is remembered all over the world as a symbol of the triumph of the Soviet cosmonautics and the human conquest of airless space. In honor of the first cosmonaut, toponyms were renamed, many institutions, vehicles, scientific and sports awards, and even the Baikonur complex are named after him - Site No. 1 is also called the Gagarinsky Start.