Yuri Gagarin's 1961 flight nearly ended in a reentry spin

Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space on April 12, 1961, circling Earth once in 108 minutes aboard the Soviet Vostok 1 at about 27,400 km/h. The flight’s most dangerous moments came not at launch, when he shouted “Poyekhali!” (“Let’s go!”), but on the way home.

The reentry scare

Before reentry, Vostok was meant to cast off its equipment module, which carried the electronics and the thrusters used to brake out of orbit. The module did not fully separate and stayed tethered to the capsule by a strand of wires. The lopsided pair spun, subjecting Gagarin to about 8 g, far more than a normal descent. A trained fighter pilot, he stayed conscious until the wires broke and the capsule steadied.

Planners had hedged against worse. Most of the flight was automated, and if the braking thrusters had failed, Vostok’s low orbit would have decayed on its own after about 10 days. Gagarin carried enough food and supplies to survive that long.

Unlike early American astronauts, he did not land inside his spacecraft. At about 7 km up he ejected and came down by parachute near Saratov, while the empty capsule thudded down separately. A local farmer and his daughter watched him float in wearing an orange suit. He later recalled telling 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!”

The 27-year-old became perhaps the most famous man on Earth. The United States answered with Alan Shepard’s suborbital hop the next month. Gagarin never flew in space again: managers grounded him from an early Soyuz mission rather than risk him, and he died in a training-flight crash on 27 March 1968.