Gagarin

Personal data:

Birthdate:  09 March 1934 Birthplace:  Klushino / Smolensk Oblast / RUSSIA Marital status:  married with Valentina I. Goryatsheva Children:  two: Yelena (1959) & Galina (1961) Selection date:  07 March 1960 Selection group:  TsPK-1 Job:  Pilot Status:  Deceased 27 March 1968 MiG jet trainer crash near Star City Place of death:  Novoselovo / Vladimir Oblast / Russian SFSRh

Spaceflights:

Backup assignments No. Mission Job 1  Soyuz 1  Plt

A picture of Gagarin during his studies at Orenburg Military Pilot′s School with his wife Valentina

Yury Gagarin with his wife Valentina and daughter Jelena at the beach in June 1960

Additional information

• Gagarin was born on March 9, 1934, in the rural village of Klushino, about 200 kilometres (125 miles) west of Moscow, to parents who worked on a Soviet socialist-style collective farm.
• His schooling was interrupted by the 1941 Nazi invasion when the family′s home was requisitioned and they were forced to move into a mud hut.
• Passionate about planes from childhood, Gagarin joined a flying club at the age of 20 and later trained as a military fighter pilot.
• Selected for space: As a member of the Soviet air force, Gagarin volunteered in 1959 with 19 others to train to fly what was called a "new type of apparatus".
  The group was whittled down to six, including Gagarin.
• Graduated from Higher Air Force School; Colonel, Soviet Air Force; was selected on 07.03.1960 as cosmonaut (TsPK-1); OKP:3/60 - 18.01.1961;
  from May 1961 - December 1963 Chief-cosmonaut; from December 1963 - March 1968 Deputy Director TsPK.
• In April 1961 he was picked for the first manned mission to space, an announcement made just days before the flight.
• By then Gagarin was aged 27 and married to a nurse with whom he had two daughters.
• On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin blasted off the launch pad in Baikonur at 9:08 AM local time. His call-sign for the flight was "Cedar". Sergei Korolev, the Program’s Chief Designer, would call from the ground, "‘Dawn’ calling ‘Cedar.’" Gagarin made his historic 108 minute flight (orbiting around the whole Earth once) and parachute landed near his Vostok 1 capsule in the plains of Russia. This flight made him the first human to orbit the Earth and an international hero. Yuri was only 27 years old.
• Seven years after his flight, on Wednesday 27 March 1968, Yuri was piloting a MiG-15 when he got into a tragic crash that ended his life. He was 34. People say that, that is why John Glenn was not allowed to fly again for so long to protect him. Yuri is survived by his wife Valentina and his two daughters, Lenochka and Galochka.