Yuri gagarin på chalmers
His sister Zoya, born in , helped take care of "Yura" and their youngest brother Boris, born in On their first day in the village, they burned down the school, ending Yuri's first year of education. From a pool of qualified pilots short-listed by their Air Force units, the military physicians chose 29 cosmonaut candidates, of whom 20 were approved by the Credential Committee of the Soviet government.
NASA - Yuri Gagarin: First Man in Space
As several of the candidates selected for the programme including Gagarin did not have higher education degrees, they were enrolled in a correspondence course programme at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. His mother was hospitalized during the same period, after a German soldier gashed her leg with a scythe. Following his spaceflight, Gagarin became the deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre , which was later named after him.
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin [a] 9 March — 27 March was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who, aboard the first successful crewed spaceflight , became the first human to journey into outer space. In retaliation, Yuri sabotaged the soldier's work; he poured soil into the tank batteries gathered to be recharged and randomly mixed the different chemical supplies intended for the task.
Vostok 1 was Gagarin's only spaceflight, but he served as the backup crew to Soyuz 1 , which ended in a fatal crash, killing his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. After completing training at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy in February , he was again allowed to fly regular aircraft. However, Gagarin died five weeks later, when the MiG that he was piloting with flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin crashed near the town of Kirzhach.
He graduated from flight school the next day and was posted to the Luostari Air Base , close to the Norwegian border in Murmansk Oblast , for a two-year assignment with the Northern Fleet. They learned to read using a discarded Soviet military manual. They escaped and were found by Soviet soldiers who conscripted them into helping with the war effort.
Gagarin began training at the Khodynka Airfield in central Moscow on 15 March The training regimen involved vigorous and repetitive physical exercises which Alexei Leonov , a member of the initial group of twelve, described as akin to training for the Olympic Games. His older brother Valentin was born in , and by the time Yuri was born he was already helping with the cattle on the farm.
Yuri Gagarin: the spaceman who came in from the cold
Gagarin was a candidate favoured by his peers; when they were asked to vote anonymously for a candidate besides themselves they would like to be the first to fly, all but three chose Gagarin. A Nazi officer took over the Gagarin residence. When the Germans were routed out of Klushino on 9 March , Yuri helped the Red Army find mines buried in the roads by the fleeing German army.
The first twelve, including Gagarin, were approved on 7 March and eight more were added in a series of subsequent orders issued until June. Travelling on Vostok 1 , Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April By achieving this major milestone for the Soviet Union amidst the Space Race , he became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including the nation's highest distinction: Hero of the Soviet Union.
Having completed his evaluation in a trainer aircraft, [20] Gagarin began flying solo in On 5 November , Gagarin was commissioned a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Forces , having accumulated hours and 47 minutes of flight time. Yuri was also part of a group of children that built model aeroplanes.
However, the commander of the regiment decided to give him another chance at landing. The chief engineer of the programme Sergei Korolev also specified that candidates, to fit in the limited space in the Vostok capsule , should weigh less than 72 kg lb and be no taller than 1. He was fascinated with aircraft from a young age and his interest in aeroplanes was energized after a Yakovlev fighter plane crash landed in Klushino during the war.
Usanov, a member of the commission.
Fearful that a high-level national hero might be killed, Soviet officials banned Gagarin from participating in further spaceflights. He was also elected as a deputy of the Soviet of the Union in and then to the Soviet of Nationalities , respectively the lower and upper chambers of the Supreme Soviet.
In , aged 16, Gagarin began an apprenticeship as a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy , near Moscow, [12] [13] and enrolled at a local "young workers" school for seventh-grade evening classes. On the land behind their house, the family was allowed to build a mud hut measuring approximately 3 by 3 metres 10 by 10 ft , where they spent 21 months until the end of the occupation.
In , the family moved to Gzhatsk, where Gagarin continued his education. They did not return home until after the war, in The rest of the Gagarin family believed the two older children were dead, and Yuri became ill with "grief and hunger"; [14] he was also beaten for refusing to work for the German forces and spent the remainder of the war at a hospital as a patient and later as an orderly.
Gagarin's flight instructor gave him a cushion to sit on, which improved his view from the cockpit, and he landed successfully. He later joined the Soviet Air Forces as a pilot and was stationed at the Luostari Air Base , near the Norway—Soviet Union border , before his selection for the Soviet space programme alongside five other cosmonauts.
A former Soviet airman later joined the school to teach maths and science, [15] Yuri's favourite subjects. Those who refused were beaten or sent to the concentration camp set up at Gzhatsk.