Archival Gagarin video (original from NASA web site)

April 12 was already a huge day in space history twenty years before the launch of the first shuttle mission. On that day in 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft.

Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space less than a month later.

свернуть