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Biography: Yuri Gagarin, cosmonaut
Born: 9 March 1934
Birthplace: Klushino, Russia
Died: 27 March 1968
(airplane crash)
Best Known As: The first human in space
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Early life
Yuri Gagarin was born in
the village of Klushino near Gzhatsk (now in Smolensk
Oblast, Russia), on 9 March 1934. The adjacent town of Gzhatsk was renamed Gagarin in 1968 in his honor. His parents, Alexei Ivanovich Gagarin and Anna Timofeyevna Gagarina, worked on a collective farm.
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Early life
Like all people his age
Gagarin had to undergo the ordeals of the war
years. He was seven, when the Second World War broke out. The boy survived the Nazi invasion, the severe hardships of the war. The first planes he saw were war planes.
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Early life
When the war ended the
Gagarin family moved to Gzhatsk. Yuri attended an elementary
school in this town.
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Early life
Gagarin briefly attended a trade
school to learn foundry work in the Moscow satellite
town of Lyubertsy, then entered a technical school. He joined the Saratov Flying Club in 1955 and learned to fly the Yak-18.
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Early life
Later that year, he was
drafted and sent to the Orenburg Flying School, where
he trained in the MIG jet. Gagarin graduated November 7, 1957, four days after Sputnik 2 was launched. He married Valentina Goryacheva, a nursing student, the day he graduated.
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Career in the Soviet space program
Selection and
training
Post-graduation, he was assigned to Luostari airbase
in Murmansk Oblast, close to the Norwegian border, where terrible weather made flying risky. In 1958 space officials recruited air force pilots to train as cosmonauts.
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Career in the Soviet space program
Selection and
training
Gagarin applied and was selected to train
in the first group of sixty men. Only twelve men were taken for further training at Zvezdograd (Star City), a training field outside Moscow.
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Career in the Soviet space program
Selection and
training
Space officials closely observed the trainees.
They finally selected Gagarin for the first spaceflight. Capable, strong, and even-tempered, Gagarin represented the ideal Soviet man, a peasant farmer who became a highly trained cosmonaut in a few short years.
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Career in the Soviet space program
Space flight
He was launched in Vostok 1 on the planned
date, and during the crowded 1 hour 48 minutes of his single orbit of the earth he proved that man could survive in space and perform useful tasks. His mission ended at 10:55 A.M., when he landed safely in a field near Saratov
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Career in the Soviet space program
Fame and later
life
After the flight, Gagarin became a worldwide
celebrity, touring widely with appearances in Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Canada, and Japan to promote the Soviet achievement.
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Career in the Soviet space program
Fame and later
life
In 1962, he began serving as
a deputy to the Supreme Soviet. He later returned to Star City, the cosmonaut facility, where he worked on designs for a reusable spacecraft. Gagarin worked on these designs in Star City for 7 years.
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Death and legacy
On 27 March 1968,
while on a routine training flight, he and flight
instructor Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15UTI crash near the town of Kirzhach. Gagarin and Seryogin were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square.
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Death and legacy
American astronauts Neil
Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin left one of Gagarin's medals
on the moon as a tribute. The cosmonaut training center where he had first trained was named after him. A crater on the moon bears his name, as does Gagarin Square in Moscow with its soaring monument, along with a number of monuments and streets in cities throughout Russia. At Baikonur, a reproduction of his training room is traditionally visited by space crews before a launch. Russians celebrate Cosmonaut Day on April 12 every year in honor of Gagarin's historic flight.