Tonight, 12 April, is Yuri’s Night. It’s a
night celebrated across the globe to celebrate humanity’s first achievement in
spaceflight – the first human mission to orbit the earth. It celebrates Yuri
Alekseyevich Gagarin, and his Vostok 1 mission on 12 April 1961, when humanity
took its first tentative steps towards the stars.
Yuri Gagarin was born on 9 March 1934, on a
collective farm in the village of Klushino in Russia. His father, Alexey
Ivanovich Gagarin was a carpenter and bricklayer, and his mother, Anna
Timofeyevna Gagarina was a milkmaid. Yuri had an elder sister and brother, and
one younger brother, and the family, like so many millions during that time,
suffered during the Nazi occupation in World War II. The village was occupied
during November 1941, and a Nazi officer took over their house. They were
allowed to build a mud hut of 9 square meters next to their house to live in,
and his elder two siblings were sent to Poland for slave labour until the end
of the war.
After the war, the family moved to Gzhatsk
(now named Gagarin) where Yuri got his education. Initially apprenticing as a
foundryman, he graduated from vocational training and was selected for further
training at the Saratov Industrial Technical School, studying tractors. It was
there that he volunteered for training as a Soviet air cadet during weekends.
After graduation in 1955, he was drafted into the Soviet Army, where his flight
experience was recognized, and he was sent to the First Chkalov Air Force
Pilot’s School in Orenburg.
With his first solo flight in a MiG-15 in
1957, he graduated and was assigned to the Luostari airbase close to the
Norwegian border. The terrible weather there made flying risky, and by 6
November 1959 he was promoted to Senior Lieutenant. This meant that in 1960,
Yuri was selected with 19 other pilots to become part of the Soviet space
program. He was then further selected to be part of the so-called ‘Sochi Six’,
from which the first cosmonauts were to be selected, and subjected to experiments
to test mental and physical endurance. When the 20 candidates were asked to
vote for which candidate they’d want to go first, 17 voted for Gagarin.
The final choice was between Yuri Gagarin
and Gherman Titov. The Head of Cosmonaut Training, Nikolai Kamanin, finally
made his choice on 9 April, 1961. Yuri was examined by a team of doctors before
the flight, with one remarking, “Gagarin looked more pale than usual. He was
unsociable and quiet, which was not like him at all. He would answer by nodding
or a short 'yes' to all questions. Sometimes he would start humming some tunes.
This was a different Gagarin. We geared him up, and hugged. And I said, 'Yuri,
everything will be fine.' And he nodded back.”
At 5h30 on the Morning of April 12, 1961,
Yuri Gagarin and his backup Titov were woken up, had breakfast and were then
fitted in their suits. Yuri entered the Vostok 1 spacecraft at 07h10, two hours
before launch. Since the entire mission would be controlled by either automatic
systems or ground control (because they were unsure of how weightlessness might
affect humans) the pilot’s manuals controls were locked by code. An envelope
with the code was placed onboard in case Gagarin needed it, but prior to
getting in, Kamanin told him the code anyway.
While waiting for the launch, Yuri requested
some music. Chief Designer of the Vostok capsule, Sergei Korolov had not slept
the night before due to anxiety, and was having chest pains and on his way to a
nervous breakdown. He was given a pill to calm him down, but Yuri was calm –
his heartrate recorded at only 64 beats per minute before launch.
At 09h07, the Vostok 1 launched from
Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 1. Korolev radioed, "We wish you a good flight.
Everything is all right." Gagarin replied, "Let's go! (Poyekhali!)."
His informal “Polyekhali!” became a historical phrase, used to indicate the
beginning of the Space Age. Gagarin continued to monitor the flight over the
next ten minutes, reporting all is well and that he’s continuing the flight
until ten minutes after lift-off, when the rocket stage shut down, and
separated from the Vostok 1. It had reached orbit, and Yuri Gagarin became the
first human to orbit the earth.
From orbit, Yuri radioed, "The craft
is operating normally. I can see Earth in the view port of the Vzor.
Everything is proceeding as planned." Of weightlessness, he noted, “The
feeling of weightlessness was somewhat unfamiliar compared with Earth
conditions. Here, you feel as if you were hanging in a horizontal position in
straps. You feel as if you are suspended.”
5 minutes later, Vostok 1 had crossed
Soviet Russia and was beginning to diagonally cross the Pacific Ocean. By
11h00, it had crossed the Strait of Magellan at the tip of South America. At
11h25, over the West Coast of Africa, near Angola, the Vostok 1’s retroboosters
fired, and its descent began. By 11h35, Vostok 1 was already over Egypt, and
Gagarin began to feel the 8 gravities of deceleration, but he maintained
consciousness. At 11h55, with the Vostok 1 still seven kilometres from the ground,
Yuri was ejected, and his parachute opened. The Vostok 1’s parachute opened
2.5km from the ground, and the two schoolgirls who witnessed it said, "It
was a huge ball, about two or three meters high. It fell, then it bounced and
then it fell again. There was a huge hole where it hit the first time."
Yuri landed about ten minutes later, at
12h05, about 26km south-west of Engels in the Saratov region of Russia. A
farmer and her daughter observed this strange sight – a figure in a bright
orange suit with a large white helmet landing near them. He later recalled,
"When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as
I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told 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!"
Yuri was not so fortunate 7 years later,
when on a training flight he and his co-pilot died in a MiG-15 crash near
Kirzhach. They bodies were cremated and buried in the walls of the Kremlin on
Red Square. But Yuri will always be remembered on this day, on this night, for
his achievement. Since 2011, the UN has designated 12 April as International
Day of Human Space Flight.
So tonight, look up at the sky, and
remember Yuri’s words as he entered the Vostok 1, “Dear friends, you who are
close to me, and you whom I do not know, fellow Russians, and people of all
countries and all continents: in a few minutes a powerful space vehicle will
carry me into the distant realm of space. What can I tell you in these last
minutes before the launch? My whole life appears to me as one beautiful moment.
All that I previously lived through and did, was lived through and done for the
sake of this moment.”
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