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Audio - Rewind: Yuri Gagarin’s legacy, 50 years on: securing the vision for the next half century
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60 years ago, 27-year-old Russian cosmonaut Yuri Alexeivich Gagarin was strapped into a Vostok capsule and launched 188 miles out into space. On a spring morning at 06.07 am UT on April 12th 1961, ascending slowly from a Baikonur cosmodrome launch-pad set in the Kazakhstan steppes, he was to make history. Gagarin became the first ever human being to leave the Earth s surface and experience a new environment in the zero-gravity of the cosmos. He completed what was very nearly a full orbit of the Earth and travelled at almost 18,000 mph, moving around the planet at an extraordinary 5 miles a second.