Gagarin, Yuri

views updated

Yuri Gagarin

Born March 9, 1934 (Klushino, Russia)

Died March 27, 1968 (Near Moscow, Russia)

Russian cosmonaut

In 1957 the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made space satellite (an object that orbits in space). Four years later, on April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut (astronaut) Yuri Gagarin made a successful orbit of Earth aboard the spacecraft Vostok. As the first human to fly in space, Gagarin represented a technical triumph for the Soviet Union. Since the end of World War II (1939–45) the Soviet Union had been engaged in the Cold War (1945–91), a period of hostile relations, with the United States. The two world powers were not only competing for military superiority but also racing to be the first to explore space. Gagarin's achievement, therefore, signaled that the Soviet Union was moving ahead in the Cold War. Although Gagarin did not make another space flight, he remained a national hero and a leader in Russia's cosmonaut training program. His death during a training mission in 1968 was mourned throughout the Soviet Union.

"He invited us all into space."

Neil Armstrong, Aviation Week and Space Technology

Prepares for aviation career

Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin was born on March 9, 1934, the third of four children of Aleksey Ivanovich and Anna Gagarin.

The family lived on a collective farm in Klushino, Russia, where his father was a carpenter and his mother was a dairy-maid. Gagarin grew up helping them with their work. Lacking extensive formal education themselves, his parents encouraged him to stay in school in the nearby town of Gzhatsk. Gagarin's education was interrupted in 1941, however, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union during World War II. German troops evicted the Gagarins from their home, forcing them to live in a dug-out shelter. When the Germans retreated they took two of Gagarin's sisters with them as slave laborers. The sisters were able to return home after the war.

When the war was over, Gagarin completed school in Gzhatsk and moved to a suburb of Moscow to work in a steel factory. Apprenticing as a foundryman (a skilled steel worker), he attended a vocational college in Moscow. After a year he was accepted into a technical college in the town of Saratov. Prior to graduation in 1955 he began attending night courses in aviation at a nearby flying school, where he took his first airplane ride and made a parachute jump. This introduction to flying, Gagarin later wrote in Road to the Stars, "gave meaning to [his] whole life." He graduated from college with honors and also earned a diploma from the aviation school. The following summer he went to an aviation camp and learned how to fly. Gagarin was then accepted at the Orenburg Flight Training School, graduating two years later. In the town of Orenburg, Gagarin met Valentina Ivanova Goryacheva, a nursing student and his future wife. After graduation he joined the Soviet Air Force and volunteered for a difficult assignment in the Russian Arctic while Valentina finished nurse's training in Moscow. Yuri and Valentina were married in 1957; they later had two children, a daughter and a son.

In 1958 Gagarin joined the Communist Party, the political organization that controlled Soviet government and society. Since the first Sputnik flight the previous year, Gagarin had been closely following news of other Sputnik launches. He knew that manned space flights would be the next challenge, so he volunteered for the secret cosmonaut training program in 1959. The following year, just before his twenty-sixth birthday, he completed physical examinations and testing. After being accepted as a member of the first group of twelve cosmonauts, he could not tell even his wife that he was training to go into space. Finally, in 1961, he was allowed to reveal the truth when his family was settled into the new space-program complex called Zvezdniy Gorodok (Star Town), 40 miles (64 kilometers) from Moscow.

Pioneers human space flight

By the time Gagarin entered the cosmonaut program, the Soviets had been preparing for the first manned space flight for a year. In May 1960 they launched a series of Vostok test rockets. ("Vostok" is the Russian word for east.) Although the first two rockets failed, the third launched two dogs into space

Laika: First Animal in Space

In 1961 Yuri Gagarin made history as the first human to travel in space. The distinction of being the first living creature to orbit in space, however, is held by a Russian dog named Laika (Barker). A perky three-year-old mixed breed with pointy ears, Laika was launched from Earth on November 3, 1957, aboard Sputnik 2. Wearing a special harness, she traveled in a padded capsule equipped with life-support instruments. Electrodes had been attached to her body before takeoff so her reactions could be monitored by the ground control crew. Even though she was weightless during the flight, Laika was able to eat food and drink water. She also barked, and she could move around within the confines of her harness.

Sputnik 2 circled Earth for 163 days, completing 2,370 orbits. Laika was not alive when the spacecraft touched down on April 15, 1958. Soviet officials never released details of the flight, so it is not known how long she lived—estimates range from twenty-four hours to one week—or how she died. According to some theories, she was deliberately poisoned or gassed to prevent

her from suffering, but Russian scientists believe she died from extreme heat the day after the launch. In 1997 a plaque was placed at the Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine at Star City, in honor of Laika and other animals used for space experimentation. Laika's image has also appeared on postage stamps issued by many countries around the world.

and brought them safely back to Earth. The program was shut down for three months, however, after two rockets crashed with dogs on board in December 1960. The Vostok was then redesigned. After Sputnik 9 and Sputnik 10 were successfully launched in March 1961, the Soviets decided to go ahead with a Vostok manned flight. The final phase of the rocket was secretly assembled at the space center in Tyuratam in Kazakhstan, which was then a republic of the Soviet Union.

On April 8, 1961, Gagarin was selected to be the first human to go into space. Gherman Titov (1935–2000) was named as his backup, or the person who would take Gagarin's place if necessary. Two days later plans were finalized for a launch on April 12. At 5:00 a.m. on April 11 Vostok was towed to the launch pad, and at 1:00 p.m. Gagarin was driven to the site, accompanied by Sergei Korolev (1907–1966), the chief architect of the Soviet space program. After Gagarin was presented to the workers who had assembled the rocket, he and Korolev made final preparations for the launch.

Gagarin and Titov were awakened at 5:30 a.m. on April 12. Sensors were attached to their bodies to monitor pulse, blood pressure, and other functions. Two hours later Gagarin boarded Vostok, then waited ninety minutes for the final countdown. The spacecraft blasted off at 9:07 a.m., reaching a maximum pressure of six g's (six times the weight of gravity) in nine minutes. At 10:00 a.m. the manned Vostok mission was announced on Moscow radio.

Vostok was operated by a ground control crew. In the event of a malfunction, Gagarin would use a secret code that would allow him to operate the controls manually. Vostok reached an altitude of 327 kilometers and the flight proceeded smoothly. Gagarin was therefore free to make observations of Earth and to record his own reactions to being weightless. He proved that people can perform physical tasks, eat food, and drink liquids in space. Gagarin frequently commenting on the beauty of Earth from space—he was the first human to observe that Earth has a spherical shape. He also reported that weightlessness was a pleasant feeling. During the 108-minute flight Vostok made nearly one complete orbit of Earth. At 10:25 a.m., while passing over West Africa, the spacecraft reentered Earth's atmosphere. At an altitude of 26,247 feet (8,000 meters) the hatch of Vostok blew off and Gagarin parachuted to Earth, landing safely near the village of Smelovka in Russia.

Hailed as a hero

Although ejecting from a spacecraft was standard procedure for Vostok pilots, Soviet officials reported that Gagarin had remained aboard all the way to the ground. This was required for international certification of the Vostok flight as a record. Gagarin never revealed the truth, and for many

decades the Soviets concealed the actual facts of the landing. On April 14 Gagarin was presented to the public in Moscow as a hero. Greeted by Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971), the leader of the Soviet Union, he appeared before an enormous crowd. Gagarin's mother and father also came from their village to greet him. The event was broadcast live throughout the world—another technological first.

Gagarin was instantly promoted to the rank of major and he made appearances around the world. In addition to being named a Hero of the Soviet Union and a Hero of Socialist Labor, he became an honorary citizen of fourteen cities in six countries. He received the Tsiolkovsky Gold Medal of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the Gold Medal of the British Interplanetary Society, and two awards from the International Aeronautical Federation. Gagarin became commander of the cosmonaut team. In 1964 he was made deputy director of the cosmonaut training center at the space program headquarters complex, where he oversaw the selection and training of the first women cosmonauts. He served as capsule communicator (the link between cosmonauts and ground controllers) for four later space flights in the Vostok and Voskhod programs. He also held various political posts.

Dies in training crash

Gagarin always wanted to venture back into space. In 1966 he was returned to active status to serve as back-up cos monaut for Vladimir Komarov (1927–1967) in the first flight of the new Soyuz spacecraft. Soyuz 1 was launched on April 23, 1967, but Komarov died as the result of a parachute mal function on reentry. Gagarin was then assigned to command the upcoming Soyuz 3, but he would not fly the mission. On March 27, 1968, he took off for a routine proficiency flight in a two-seat MiG-15 training jet with his flight instructor. (A MiG jet is a Russian-made jet fighter designed to fly at an altitude of 80,000 feet [24,384 meters] and three times the speed of sound.) During low-level maneuvers with two other jets, Gagarin's plane crossed close behind another jet and was caught in its wind path. He lost control and the jet crashed into the tundra at high speed, instantly killing both Gagarin and the instructor. Gagarin was given a hero's funeral. At the time it was said that his ashes were buried in the wall of the Kremlin (the Soviet capitol building in Moscow). In 1984 it was revealed that his body was never found.

The cosmonaut training center was renamed in Gagarin's honor, as were his former hometown, a space tracking ship, and a lunar crater. His office at the center was preserved as a museum, and a huge statue of him was erected in Moscow. His book Survival in Space was published after his death. Writ ten with space-program physician Vladimir Lebedev, the work outlines Gagarin's views on the problems and requirements for successful long-term space flights. On April 12, 1991, thirty years after Gagarin's flight, his cosmonaut successors, along with eighteen American astronauts, gathered in Russia to salute his achievements.