Launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, the 27-year-old Gagarin rode Vostok 1 into orbit, radioing back the calm phrase "Poyekhali!" ("Let's go!") as the rocket left the pad. His single orbit lasted 108 minutes before he parachuted to Earth near the Volga River, instantly becoming a global celebrity and a Cold War propaganda triumph for the USSR.
Gagarin's flight was shrouded in secrecy until it succeeded. Soviet engineers had no way to test a soft landing for the capsule itself, so Gagarin was ejected at about 7,000 meters and parachuted down separately, a detail the USSR hid for years because international spaceflight records required the pilot to land with the craft.
When he touched down in a field near Engels, a startled farmer and her daughter approached the man in the orange spacesuit and white helmet. Gagarin later recalled telling them, "Don't be afraid, I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!"
The flight electrified the Cold War space race, arriving weeks before the U.S. answered with Alan Shepard's suborbital hop. Gagarin never flew in space again; the Soviet government, wary of losing its hero, kept him mostly on the ground until his death in a 1968 jet training accident.
Key people: Yuri Gagarin