«OUR GAGARIN»

To the Day of Cosmonautics

To the 90th anniversary of the birth of the first cosmonaut of the planet Yuri Gagarin

DEDICATED TO THE FIRST HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was the first man in the history of humanity who, on the board of the Soviet spacecraft “Vostok”, made a flight to space. Gagarin’s flight lasted 108 minutes. One minute before the start the first cosmonaut hummed “Letite, golubi, letite” (Fly, Doves, Fly). Several seconds later Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer Sergei Pavlovich Korolev said “LIFT-OFF!” and Gagarin uttered his famous phrase “Poekhali” (“Let’s go!”). “Cedar” as a call sign of the first cosmonaut was repeated 46 times above the Earth, while “Zarya-1” as a call sign of S.P. Korolev was pronounced 33 times.

April 12, 1961 was a truly clear spring day throughout the vast territory of the Soviet Union; the sun was shining in a brilliant, cloudless blue sky. Yuri Levitan’s solemn exultant voice came from the radio sets, boomed from the load speakers on the factories, floated over the streets from the radios placed on the sills of the open windows. “In the Soviet Union the world’s first spacecraft “Vostok” was launched into the Earth Orbit with a man aboard,” the announcer was reading a TASS report.

Language: English