Listen • 0:59
Mon Apr 12, 2021 YURI GAGARIN
Sixty years ago today, on April 12th, 1961, the first human was launched into space. What was his name? It wasn’t John Glenn, he was the first American to orbit the earth in a Mercury spacecraft. It wasn’t Neil Armstrong, he and Buzz Aldrin were the first astronauts to land on the moon, back in 1969. It wasn’t Alan Shepard. He also walked on the moon, and he was the first American to go into outer space, but that happened almost a month after the first man orbited the earth. That man was Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut. It was a smooth launch and a smooth orbit, but the way Gagarin came back to earth was a bit unorthodox. The Vostok spacecraft didn’t have enough parachutes to slow it down without leaving a small crater, so several miles up, Gagarin was ejected from the capsule, and then had to parachute down to the ground all on his own – those were exciting times!