Yury Gagarin

Fifty years ago on April 12, with a rousing cry of “ Poekhali!” ( “Let’s Go!”), cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin raced skywards to become the first human in space.

Launching in Vostok 1 from Kazakhstan at 9.06am that sunny day in 1961, the 27-year-old carpenter’s son circled the Earth once on a 
108-minute space flight, before parachuting safely to ground in the Saratov region of the USSR.