Fifty years ago on April 12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space, ushering in the era of human spaceflight.
The rocket carrying Gagarin's Vostok 1 spacecraft blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 6:07 a.m. local time at the Soviet Union launch site. [Photos: Yuri Gagarin, First Man in Space]
Reaching unprecedented speeds for human travel at the time, the spacecraft broke free of the Earth's gravitational pull and entered orbit around the planet, circling once before re-entering the atmosphere and landing back on Soviet soil.
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