60th Anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight into space
12 April 2021
Today Russia celebrates the 60th anniversary of the legendary flight that made Yuri Gagarin the first man in space, a major source of national pride for millions of his countrymen.
On 12 April 1961 Gagarin took off in his Vostok spacecraft from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, then, part of the Soviet Union. It was then that the 27 year old Gagarin exclaimed his iconic catchphrase “Poyekhali!” (Let's go!).
His flight lasted 108 minutes, the time it took to orbit the Earth, before returning to home soil. Gagarin bailed out as planned and parachuted onto a field near the Volga River, southeast of Moscow.