the first human space journey

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This Day In History : April 12

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Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space

On April 12, 1961, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin becomes the first human being to travel into space . During the flight, the 27-year-old test pilot and industrial technician also became the first man to orbit the planet, a feat accomplished by his space capsule in 89 minutes. Vostok 1 orbited Earth at a maximum altitude of 187 miles and was guided entirely by an automatic control system. The only statement attributed to Gagarin during his one hour and 48 minutes in space was, “Flight is proceeding normally; I am well.”

After his historic feat was announced, the attractive and unassuming Gagarin became an instant worldwide celebrity. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union . Monuments were raised to him across the Soviet Union and streets renamed in his honor.

The triumph of the Soviet space program in putting the first man into space was a great blow to the United States, which had scheduled its first space flight for May 1961. Moreover, Gagarin had orbited Earth, a feat that eluded the U.S. space program until February 1962, when astronaut John Glenn made three orbits in Friendship 7 . By that time, the Soviet Union had already made another leap ahead in the “space race” with the August 1961 flight of cosmonaut Gherman Titov in Vostok 2 . Titov made 17 orbits and spent more than 25 hours in space.

To Soviet propagandists, the Soviet conquest of space was evidence of the supremacy of communism over capitalism. However, to those who worked on the Vostok program and earlier on Sputnik (which launched the first satellite into space in 1957), the successes were attributable chiefly to the brilliance of one man: Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. Because of his controversial past, Chief Designer Korolev was unknown in the West and to all but insiders in the USSR until his death in 1966.

Born in the Ukraine in 1906, Korolev was part of a scientific team that launched the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket in 1933. In 1938, his military sponsor fell prey to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s purges, and Korolev and his colleagues were also put on trial. Convicted of treason and sabotage, Korolev was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp. The Soviet authorities came to fear German rocket advances, however, and after only a year Korolev was put in charge of a prison design bureau and ordered to continue his rocketry work.

In 1945, Korolev was sent to Germany to learn about the V-2 rocket, which had been used to devastating effect by the Nazis against the British. The Americans had captured the rocket’s designer, Wernher von Braun, who later became head of the U.S. space program, but the Soviets acquired a fair amount of V-2 resources, including rockets, launch facilities, blueprints, and a few German V-2 technicians. By employing this technology and his own considerable engineering talents, by 1954 Korolev had built a rocket that could carry a five-ton nuclear warhead and in 1957 launched the first intercontinental ballistic missile.

That year, Korolev’s plan to launch a satellite into space was approved, and on October 4, 1957, Sputnik 1 was fired into Earth’s orbit. It was the first Soviet victory of the space race, and Korolev, still technically a prisoner, was officially rehabilitated. The Soviet space program under Korolev would go on to numerous space firsts in the late 1950s and early ’60s: first animal in orbit, first large scientific satellite, first man, first woman, first three men, first space walk, first spacecraft to impact the moon, first to orbit the moon, first to impact Venus, and first craft to soft-land on the moon. Throughout this time, Korolev remained anonymous, known only as the “Chief Designer.” His dream of sending cosmonauts to the moon eventually ended in failure, primarily because the Soviet lunar program received just one-tenth the funding allocated to America’s successful Apollo lunar landing program.

Korolev died in 1966. Upon his death, his identity was finally revealed to the world, and he was awarded a burial in the Kremlin wall as a hero of the Soviet Union. Yuri Gagarin was killed in a routine jet-aircraft test flight in 1968. His ashes were also placed in the Kremlin wall.

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Yuri Gagarin: First Human in Space

On April 12, 1961, the era of human spaceflight began when the Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth in his Vostock I spacecraft. The flight lasted 108 minutes.

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Yuri Gagarin and Vostok 1, the First Human Spaceflight

Facts Worth Sharing Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space on 12 April 1961. Gagarin launched from what is now Kazakhstan in his Vostok 1 spacecraft. He orbited Earth once and landed near the Russian city of Saratov. Gagarin’s flight pushed the Soviet Union ahead in the Space Race with the United States. It also pushed President John F. Kennedy to declare that NASA would land humans on the Moon by 1970.

Why Yuri Gagarin’s Flight Happened

No nation had ever flown a human into space until the Soviet Union did it on 12 April 1961. Yuri Gagarin’s one-orbit flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft ushered in a new era of spaceflight and scored a key victory for the Soviets, who were locked in a struggle for technological and ideological supremacy with the United States.

In the wake of World War II, the U.S. and Soviet Union became the world’s two superpowers. Each represented opposing societal beliefs: the U.S. a capitalist society that promised to reward individual effort, and the Soviets a socialist society that emphasized communal efforts.

Nuclear weapons proliferated until the two nations reached a stalemate under the threat of mutually assured destruction. If one side started a war, both would likely be destroyed, causing global devastation in the process. 

The next high ground became space. Whoever controlled space would not only win a theoretical military advantage, but also secure an implied endorsement of their nation’s ideology.

The Soviets struck first by launching Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, in 1957. The U.S. responded with Explorer 1 in 1958. The space capabilities of both nations grew until they were on the verge of launching humans.

Once again, the Soviets were first. Officially , the U.S. congratulated the Soviet Union for Gagarin’s 108-minute flight. Unofficially, pressure mounted to match the achievement. Just five days later, a U.S.-backed invasion of communist Cuba failed, dealing further embarrassment to the United States. On 20 April 1961, President John F. Kennedy asked Vice President Lyndon Johnson to report on the status of the space program and look for a way to match the Soviets’ accomplishment. Kennedy and his advisors eventually settled on the Moon as the goal, and on 25 May, just 3 weeks after NASA finally launched astronaut Alan Shepard into space on a brief suborbital flight, Kennedy introduced what would become the Apollo program during an address to Congress:

“I believe that this nation should commit itself, to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon, and returning him safely to the Earth. No single project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space. And none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

The U.S. eventually caught up with and surpassed the Soviet Union in the ensuing race to the Moon. The Soviets would go on to have great success with their Salyut and Mir space station programs, paving the way for Russia and the U.S. to work together on the International Space Station after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

How Vostok 1 Worked

The rocket that blasted Vostok 1 and Yuri Gagarin into orbit was derived from the Soviet Union’s R-7 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, or ICBM. Originally designed to launch nukes at the United States, the rocket was repurposed to handle human cargo.

Gagarin was a senior lieutenant in the Soviet air force when the government selected him and 19 other pilots to join the first cosmonaut training program. He was eventually chosen for the Vostok 1 flight due to his skill and the fact that he was short (1.57 meters, or 5’2”), which allowed him to fit more easily into his cramped capsule.

Vostok 1 consisted of a pressurized sphere just 2 meters wide, along with an equipment module that housed electronics and the thrusters that would be used to bring the vehicle back to Earth. In the event that the reentry thrusters failed, Gagarin would have reentered Earth’s atmosphere naturally after 10 days . He brought with him enough food and supplies to stay alive if that happened.

Gagarin launched from what is now the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. At that point the site was named Tyratam after a nearby rail station in an attempt to confuse the West about the exact purpose of the launch site. The pad where Vostok 1 blasted off is now named Gagarin’s Start and is still used for crewed Soyuz launches.

Gagarin and Vostok 1 launched around midday. Shortly after liftoff, the cosmonaut famously yelled “Poyekhali!” over the radio, which in English roughly translates to “Let’s roll!” He entered orbit a few minutes later and was able to see the Earth through a single window near his feet.

Most of the flight was automated, though Gagarin had the ability to take manual control of his spacecraft in an emergency. As Vostok 1 prepared to reenter Earth’s atmosphere, the vehicle jettisoned its equipment module as planned. However, the module did not fully separate and was left attached to Gagarin’s capsule by a strand of wires.

The extra weight threw Gagarin into a spin, causing him to experience 8 Gs of force—far more than expected during a normal flight. As a trained fighter jet pilot, he was able to maintain consciousness until the wires holding on to the equipment module broke free, stabilizing his descent.

At about 7 kilometers above the Earth, Gagarin ejected from Vostok 1 as planned and parachuted to the ground. A local farmer and his daughter observed the spherical metal ball of Vostok 1 smashing into the ground, followed by Gagarin gently floating in for a landing in his orange flight suit. Gagarin later recalled: "When they saw me in my space suit, they started to back away in fear. I told them, don't be afraid, I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!"

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The First Human in Space

A portrait of Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space, is part of an exhibition in Moscow celebrating the 50th anniversary of his flight on April 12, 1961. The successful mission was a major space race victory for the Soviet Union and is still considered one of the greatest Russian achievements. It motivated the United States to land an American on the moon by the end of the decade.

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On the 50th anniversary of human space flight, a look at Yuri Gagarin and his extraordinary journey.

April 12, 2021

First in Space: New Yuri Gagarin Biography Shares Hidden Side of Cosmonaut

It’s been 60 years, to the day, since Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human to travel to space in a tiny capsule attached to an R-7 ballistic missile, a powerful rocket originally designed to carry a three- to five-megaton nuclear warhead. In this new episode marking the 60th anniversary of this historic space flight—the first of its kind— Scientific American talks to Stephen Walker, an award-winning filmmaker, director and book author, about the daring launch that changed the course of human history and charted a map to the skies and beyond.

Walker discusses his new book  Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space , out today, and how Gagarin’s journey—an enormous mission that was fraught with danger and planned in complete secrecy—happened on the heels of a cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and sparked a relentless space race between a rising superpower and an ailing one, respectively.

Walker, whose films have won an Emmy and a BAFTA, revisits the complex politics and pioneering science of this era from a fresh perspective. He talks about his hunt for eyewitnesses, decades after the event; how he uncovered never-before-seen footage of the space mission; and, most importantly, how he still managed to put the human story at the heart of a tale at the intersection of political rivalry, cutting-edge technology, and humankind’s ambition to conquer space and explore new frontiers.

By Pakinam Amer

Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to journey into outer space.

Getty Images

Pakinam Amer: It was at 09.07 am Moscow time on April 12, 1961 that a new chapter of history was written. On that day, without much fanfare, Russia sent the first human to space and it happened in secrecy, with very few hints in advance.

Yuri Gagarin, 27-year-old Russian ex-fighter pilot and cosmonaut, was launched into space inside a tiny capsule on top of a ballistic missile, originally designed to carry a warhead. 

The spherical capsule was blasted into orbit, circling the Earth at a speed of about 300 miles per minute, 10 times faster than a rifle bullet.

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Accounts vary on exactly how long Gagarin spent circling our blue planet before he re-entered the atmosphere, hurtling towards Earth, gravity rapidly pulling him in.

Some say it was 108 [ one hundred and eight ] minutes. Stephen Walker, my guest today and the author of a new book on Gagarin’s historic feat and the world it happened in, puts at 106 [ one hundred and six ].

Give or take a few minutes, that space venture aboard Vostok 1 — orbiting the earth at a maximum altitude of roughly 200 miles and putting the first man in space — still set the record for space achievement.

It sparked a space race between the US and Russia that, 8 eight years later, put other men on the moon for that small step hailed as a giant leap.

It is said that Gagarin whistled a love song as his capsule prepared for launch

One man, five feet five, in an orange space suit, strapped into a seat inside a capsule attached to a modified R-7, the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile. … 

… 106 minutes or 108, man’s first pilgrimage around the planet we call home

... a solitary journey that is still celebrated as monumental and game-changing 60 years on.

This is Pakinam Amer, and you’re listening to Science Talk, a Scientific American podcast. And today, my guest Stephen Walker and I will talk about a legendary astronaut and a super secret space mission that changed everything.

Stephen Walker: [I] came across a book that was written by a guy called [Vladimir] Suvorov who had kept a diary, a secret diary of the secret Soviet space program which he was filming from about 1959 right the way through into the 60s and it was fascinating because it was so secret that he wasn't even able to tell his wife what he was doing but he was away filming all this stuff and he says in his diary this felt like science fiction.

It was just so incredible what was happening in secret and I thought myself I want to find the footage because if I can find that footage which is apparently shot in color and on 35 millimeter I can appraise that footage and turn it into a theatrical feature film which gives you the inside image, the inside sight into this incredible first step to space to the beyond.”

That was Stephen Walker, British director and New York Times bestselling author of Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima. And this was his attempt to dust off decades-old footage showing months of preparing Vostok 1 to put a Soviet citizen into orbit before the Americans.

Stephen traveled to Russia, tracked down eye witnesses who worked at the top secret rocket site in the USSR, shot the interviews in high-definition and gathered some raw, never-before-seen insider material shot between 1959 and 61, that he describes as pristine.

But he couldn’t get access to the rest of the footage. What he had was great but wasn’t enough for a full feature film.

So instead, he wrote a book.

It’s called Beyond and it’s published by HarperCollins.

Pakinam Amer: So Stephen, you’re one of those people who actually wrote a book in lockdown.

Stephen Walker: It was incredibly exciting in a way but it was weird, because all this other stuff was going on outside. And I didn't see it. Really. Of course, I did see it. But when people talk about Corona for me at that point, I wasn't thinking about the Coronavirus, I was thinking about the corona spy satellite system that the Americans had in 1961, which I talk about in my book where they were spying on secret Soviet missile complexes. I mean, I was in a different world. I was literally in 1961. And I was also in 2020. It was a really weird experience>

Pakinam Amer: But you began weaving the yarn in 2012?

Stephen Walker: Yeah, I mean, I've done lots of other things since then. I did three trips to Russia. One in 2012. One in 2013. I think I actually had another in 2014 or 2015. The last one was actually a short trip to St. Petersburg, where I met this incredible couple and one of things is wonderful about the Soviet space program at that time, was that actually very unlike NASA, which seemed to have a real major problem about women being anywhere near NASA.

I mean, actually women were not even allowed in the launch blockhouses at Cape Canaveral in 1961. They were forbidden to get in them … There was one woman, a wonderful woman, I interviewed called Joanne Morgan, who was the only woman engineer of all of them [who was allowed] in the launch Center at Kennedy Space Center in 1969. For the moon landing, she's the only one woman and everybody else is a guy. And back in 61, she was telling me over crab cocktails in Cape Canaveral. She told me that you know, she was actually not even allowed to go into the launch of the launch blockhouse, she was forbidden to go in.

Whereas actually in the USSR, oddly enough, it wasn't like that. And I interviewed this couple called Vladimir and Khionia Kraskin, and they're in my book. And they were this wonderful husband and wife in their 80s. And they entertained me in this wonderful little Soviet-style flat in Saint Petersburg, and told me glorious stories about how they were both engineers, telemetry engineers, that have moved there with their child to this weird place in the middle of the Kazakh Steppe, you know, where this new rocket cosmodrome was being built.

And they actually were working right at the epicenter of the Soviet space program, and for that matter, the Soviet missile program, and these were their glory days. It was quite an incredible thing to sort of talk to them both about and they were there when Gagarin launched and with all of that stuff, they were there all the way through it. It was wonderful; it was so Russian, we ended up sitting and drinking vodka until four o'clock in the morning.

I interviewed them on camera, and we had this wonderful, it was quite glorious. This guy had actually out of chocolate wrappers from Ferrero Roche chocolates had constructed a two-meter-high replica of the R-7 rocket that took Yuri Gagarin into space and it was in his sitting room. It was Incredible. It was all made out of chocolate, you know, gold wrappers, it was beautiful.

And, and so I kind of fell in love with these people. And I also sort of felt, you know, I want to tell their stories because they just aren't being heard by anybody. It's all moon, moon, moon, lunar, lunar, lunar. And that's great. Don't get me wrong, it's really important. It's a landmark. It's all of that I get it. But this is an amazing story. And these are amazing stories that people don't know about, and they are really exciting, and really dramatic and really touching and really moving and really, you know, epoch changing, in my opinion.”

Pakinam Amer: Stephen, when I read your book, it almost felt like a novelization of that era. It's a very intricate and intimate account of the people who were involved in that space mission. A very rich account, not just of the orbit itself, but of the tensions reminiscent of the cold war between the US and the Sovient Union, then the space race. But yours is primarily a human story. What inspired you to write it, decades down the line?

Stephen Walker: It is a major philosophical leap for humankind, this is not just advanced Soviet v. America, it really isn't. And to think of it in those terms, is to miss the essential point. Because what I believe

is that the first human being in space is one of the most epoch call moments in all human history.

For essentially three and a half billion years since, or any life began on this planet, anything, okay? This man is the first to leave, he is the first human eye to look down on the biosphere from outside, he is the first--to use the words of Plato--he is the first to escape the cave that we are all in. He steps into the beyond; it is that very first step outside. Nobody had seen this before.

It is one of the things that when you actually put yourself back into that world at that time, and Gagarin very quickly became the most famous man on the planet. You understand why? Because what this is all pre-moon, none of that had happened is this guy was seeing something that no one else in all history whether a human or anything had ever seen. When he looked out in that porthole window, he saw the stars, he saw the earth. And he saw a sunrise in fast motion, and a sunset in fast motion. He saw the incredible fragility of the earth. He saw what we're all destroying, frankly, right now, he saw all of that. And he was the first to see it.

So for me, that is a philosophical psychological quarter, which will be emotional, it is somebody stepping out of the cave into the sunlight as it were to pursue the metaphor and blinking in the light and going, Oh, my God, what's this? What's this that's out here? What is this? He was the first to do it at incredible risk.

It happened because of the politics. It happened because of the race. It happened because of the iron curtain. We know all of those things are valid at all that but actually, in the end, the event, the achievement, better than that the moment is bigger than all of those things way, way, way bigger than all of those things, three and a half billion years. And something changes on April the 12th 1961, at you know, ten past nine in the morning, Moscow time. And that's this. And that's the story.

So for me, it's everything. That's the first thing that kind of animated me to write the book. And I felt that I even had a sign above my desk saying, “remember, Stephen, three and a half billion years, remember,” I kept thinking that when I started to get into the politics too much or got a bit lost in whatever details, as one always does, and pull back from it. What is this really about?

And the other thing that I thought was really important about this. And it animated my writing too. I'm not interested in writing history books that end up in library stacks for decades. I mean, I'm a filmmaker. I want to reach people. And what I tried to do in this story was tell people about people. What interests me most of all, I'm interested, obviously in the technical achievement and really interested in the politics. Of course I am. I couldn't write this book if I wasn't. But what I'm really, really interested in people.

Who was this guy? What was this rivalry like between him and this guy, Titov? He was [the Soviet] number two.

There's an incredible story there, which I kind of talked about, where you get these two men who are both competing to be the first human in space. They are best friends. They are next door neighbors. And they have a child each the same kind of age little infant child, but Titov's child Igor dies at the age of eight months, right in the middle of their Cosmonaut Training, and the Gagarin husband and wife with their own child about the same age, a little girl ...  they are incredible to him. They are and his wife, Tamara, they are locked in embrace, they are supportive, they are wonderful. And I know this because I interviewed Titov's wife in Moscow. And she told me all of this, it was quite incredible. She was in tears when she told me this stuff.

And yet, these two men with this love with this tragedy that they kind of shared and helped each other through living next door and on adjoining balconies and crossing over each other's balconies to spend time with each other and late nights talking and drinking vodka and all those sorts of things. They're also rivals for immortality, effectively. And we're not really talking about Titov today, we're talking about Yuri Gagarin. So he lost, he lost. And yet underlying that rivalry is love.

And to me, that becomes human that becomes rich and interesting. It's not just ‘Oh, who came first,’ it's actually a real, it's a relationship of brothers, with all the complexities that fraternal relationships like that would have, you know, the rivalry, the kind of male rivalry, but also the love and the connection in the background. So it's complicated, difficult, it doesn't fit easily into boxes, but a very, very human mix of emotions that drives forward. So characters, people who make the story, this pivotal moment in human history happen, is what really excites me.

Pakinam Amer: Stephen painted an interesting picture of the world where Gagarin’s extraordinary mission happened. How back then, the Soviet Union and the United States were head to head, taking colossal risks in the race to be first in space.

Before Gagarin’s mission, the Soviet Union had already blasted the first satellite in into space, Sputnik 1.

Only three weeks after Gagarin’s earth orbit, American astronaut Alan Shepard--part of the so-called Mercury-7--was launched into space aboard a rocket called Freedom 7.

Less than a year later, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962.

But Gagarin’s leap into the unknown, being a first, was terrifying.

No one knew what would happen to a person once they’re launched into space. Would they go mad? Can their body withstand it?

Like Stephen aptly describes, there was no textbook for that mission … anywhere. So what exactly were the challenges …

Stephen Walker: The challenges are physiological and psychological, the physiological challenges, some of which had been kind of looked at and dealt with some of the animal flights they do, which I write about in the book with dogs in a Soviet Union and with monkeys, and then finally, obviously a chimpanzee called Ham in the United States. But what actually, they didn't know really was what a human physiology would do in that environment.

So what you're talking about are unbelievable, first of all, acceleration forces in a rocket. Nobody, let's just get this really clear. From the beginning. Nobody had sat on top of a nuclear missile, replacing the nuclear bomb, and then firing it upwards, nobody.

And this particular missile, the R-7, was the biggest missile in the world, it was much bigger than any missile the Americans had, it was powerful enough to fly from Kazakhstan, to New York with a thermonuclear weapon on top of it... It was astonishingly radically advanced for its time. And no human had sat on top of one with a million pounds of thrust and lit the fuse and see what happens.

So they didn't know. I mean, it could blow up straight there on the pad. It could be that the physiological experiences, the actual acceleration, or G-forces could be too much for a body to withstand. And once this rocket had actually got into orbit, and the capsules there, nobody knew what weightlessness would do to a human body.

There were real fears that a human wouldn't be able to breathe properly, even obviously, in an oxygenated atmosphere. The human being wouldn't be able to swallow, for example, that weightlessness would do really, really strange things to the heart, they wouldn't beat properly. You know, nobody knew because nobody experienced weightlessness of any kind for more than a few seconds in one of those aeroplanes that simulated weightlessness with his parabolas, they kept flying. But that was only for about 20 seconds. This is going to be much, much longer than that.

So they just didn't know. They were tremendous concerns about how he'd get down again, everybody knew that a capsule returning through the atmosphere would build up massive amounts of friction, the temperatures would reach 1500 degrees centigrade, even more, you know, would it burn away? Would whatever protection he had in the form of a heat shield, or in the design of the capsule itself? Would it work already burn up as he came down? You know, would that be a problem?

And then, beyond all of those problems, there was, as I said, the psychological problem. And the psychological problem basically boiled down to very simple sentence, or rather a very simple question, but with a very simple answer. And that was, would he go insane? Was he going mad in space, because the real fear, and it was a real fear at that time.

And there were, there was psychological textbooks that were written about something called space horror , was that the first human being divorced from the planet below divorce from life or life as we know it divorce for all of that sailing alone, and this is ultimate loneliness or isolation, in the vacuum of space in his little sphere, might go mad.

So they had to think about that, too. And what they thought about as I described in my book was a very Soviet response, they decided that flight will be completely automated. So the guy wouldn't have to do anything at all inside it, except essentially endure it, whatever “endure” actually meant. But they then decided at the last moment, that if actually, something did go wrong, and he needed to take manual control, then how are they going to let him have manual control.

And they came up with this extraordinary solution, which is just utterly mad, where they basically had a three digit code, which you press on, like, the kind of thing you have in a hotel safe on the side of his capsule, and you press these three numbers, which I think will one to five; it's in the book, and that would unlock the manual controls. But then they worried that he might go so crazy that he might just do that anyway, take control, and God knows what he'll do, you know, destroy himself, defect to America, in his spacecraft.

These were proper discussions that took place, literally a few days before he flew. And in the end, what they decided to do was to put the code in an envelope, and seal the envelope, and glue it somewhere in the lining of the inside of his spacecraft. The idea being somehow-- this is crazy logic, it's not even logic-- that if he was able to find it, open it, read the code and press the correct numbers, then he won't be insane. And that was seriously discussed in a state commission of the top politicians, KGB people and space engineers, one week before Yuri Gagarin flew in space.

That's, that's what they dealt with, because they were they didn't know space, horror, insanity. So you're, again, it comes back to my saying at the very beginning, everything here is a first everything is an unknown, nobody's done it before. Nobody. And what increases that feeling of isolation that would have made the possibility of insanity a real one. Why they were so frightened was because they didn't have reliable radio communications with the ground.

They didn't have what the [American] Mercury astronauts would have, which was a chain of stations basically, in circling the globe, where they would always have somebody to talk to, and we're very used to the moon landings and there's all those, you know, communications with beeps on the end, and even with Apollo 13, the one that went wrong, they're always communicating with Mission Control in Houston. But for Gagarin's flight, I would say a substantial part of his flight.

I'm not sure if you'd actually say the majority, but a substantial part of his flight hidden nobody's talked to. He had nobody to talk to, except a microphone with a tape recorder that was installed inside his cabin. And as I say, in the book, it turns out that whoever installed the tape in the tape recorder didn't put enough tape in. So he ran out halfway around the world. And he sat there and made probably one of the few independent decisions that he made in the cabinet, in that Vostok spacecraft, which was to rewind the tape to the beginning, and then record over everything he just said. This is the first mind in space and that's what happened.

You can't really make this stuff up.

Although the radio communication with the first human who stepped beyond our planet involved few words, what we know for instance was that Yuri’s first spoken words were, “The Earth is blue, how wonderful,” Stephen includes part of the transcript of the tape that Yuri recorded during orbit aboard the capsule, as he looked out of the porthole of his capsule.

“The Earth was moving to the left, then upwards, then to the right, and downwards … I could see the horizon, the stars, the Sky,” Gagarin said. “I could see the very beautiful horizon, I could see the curvature of the Earth.”

Pakinam Amer: You’ve heard from Stephen Walker, filmmaker and author of Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space. His book is on sale today. You can get it through HarperCollins, its publisher, or wherever you buy your books. For more information visit www.stephenwalkerbeyond.com

That was Science Talk, and this is your host Pakinam Amer. Thank you for listening.

It’s been 60 years since Yuri Gagarin became the first man in outer space

• By Daniel Ofman

Soviet cosmonaut Major Yuri Gagarin, first man to orbit the earth, is shown in his space suit. Photo undated.

Sixty years ago on Monday, the Earth sent its first human into outer space — Russia’s Yuri Gagarin.

On this day in 1961, Gagarin’s space capsule completed one orbit around Earth and returned home, marking a major milestone in the space race. As he took off, you could hear Gagarin’s muffled yet iconic “ Poehali, ” which means “Let’s go” in Russian.

Gagarin’s pioneering, single-orbit flight made him a hero in the Soviet Union and an international celebrity. After putting the world’s first satellite into orbit with the successful launch of Sputnik in October 1957, the Soviet space program rushed to secure its dominance over the United States by putting a man into space. Gagarin’s steely self-control was a key factor behind the success of his pioneering, 108-minute flight.

The World’s Marco Werman spoke to Stephen Walker, who has just published a book about Yuri Gagarin called “Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space.”

Marco Werman: Stephen, tell us a little more about Yuri Gagarin. Before he became known as the first man in space, who was he?

Stephen Walker: Well, it’s a really interesting question. He was actually brought up in a little village just to the west of Moscow. And in 1941, Nazis invade Russia, and they swallow Gagarin’s village. And something very seminal happens to Gagarin, which I think determines, in some respects, the course of his life. At the age of 7, he is horrified to see that his little brother, Boris, age 5, is being hanged from an apple tree by an SS officer, and he tries to cut his brother down from this branch. But he’s very small. He can’t do it. So, he races back, yells at his mother, Anna, who comes racing out, rushes across and cuts down little Boris from this tree just in time. And that experience seared Gagarin for life. It gave him kind of an inner toughness and inner resilience, which is why he was able to sit effectively on top of the world’s biggest nuclear missile, waiting to be blasted into space.

Right. And as we know, the Americans were stunned when the space capsule orbited the Earth. So, I casually told the story of this day in 1961, earlier, basically the rocket launch; Gagarin went up, did an orbit and then came back down alive. But that doesn’t quite capture the intense drama of the day, does it?

Not at all. This rocket — it’s called an R-7 — is unbelievably dangerous. The chances of Yuri Gagarin getting back alive were less than 50-50. Almost everything you can think of goes wrong. No one knows what happens to a human being in space. And then, of course, the rocket itself is so dangerous because many of them have blown up. The Russians were desperate to get ahead of America, which means they took risks. So, it’s an incredibly dramatic tale of this 106 minutes that sort of changed the world.

What was the mission of the Soviet rocket and what did Gagarin himself think at the time about it?

Well, the mission was basically to see if a human being could survive in space and fly in orbit around the Earth. And there is this secret briefing given by Yuri Gagarin the day after his flight, and he tells the story of what happened 11 minutes after launch. Gagarin separated from the rest of his rocket, and he started very gently to spin. And then, he turned to the little porthole on his right and he saw the Earth. He had escaped the biosphere.

Incredible perspective. How was Gagarin received once he touched down some 90 minutes later?

Well, he actually landed hundreds of kilometers, of course. So, he ejects from this capsule at about 20,000 feet and the capsule lands separately. And Gagarin by parachute lands in a potato field. And there’s no one there except an old lady and her granddaughter who were picking potatoes. So, he goes up to them and they run away. They’re absolutely terrified. They see this, kind of, orange spacesuit. He manages to convince them he’s a comrade, he’s Soviet, he’s safe, and he says, “I need to get to a phone. Have you got any way of my getting to a phone?” So, they offer him the use of a horse. This guy’s been around the world at 18,000 miles an hour. And they’re talking about putting him on a horse to get to a telephone. It’s just crazy. Just before the horse arrives, some tractor drivers turn up, very curious. They’ve heard about him on the radio, on the kind of state radio, because it’s now being broadcast. And then within minutes, this jeep arrives with soldiers and they all start taking photographs. And there is a photograph of him, which is in my book, and it’s just wonderful. He’s just been around the whole planet and he’s landed in this potato field. And there’s this photograph. It’s quite extraordinary. 

I mean, it speaks of the high ambition and also the low reality of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The USSR, as you said, Stephen, was determined to beat the US in getting a human into space. What was the reaction in the West when Yuri Gagarin went up and came home, and specifically in the United States?

Absolute shock. I mean, there is a press conference which President Kennedy, remember new in the job, gave that afternoon, and he looks completely and utterly shell shocked. He says he extends his congratulations to Khrushchev, who was the premier of the USSR at the time and also to the man who was involved. He can’t even say his name, but it is a real bad moment for him and for the American space program. You’re looking at somebody who is on the back foot. And we know this because two days later, Gagarin was celebrated in a, basically, parade that was millions of people, the biggest party really in Moscow’s history.

And at the very time that Gagarin was being celebrated and having the hero of the Soviet Union gold star medal pinned to his chest, we know that Kennedy was in the Cabinet Room at the White House with his advisers, and Kennedy is tapping his teeth with his pencil, which is always a sign of nervousness with him. And he says, “What can we do? What can we do to catch up? How do we leapfrog them?” And he comes up with a wonderful line. He says, “Even if the janitor in the White House has an answer, I want to hear that answer.” And this is when the moon idea really starts to take hold. And what I hope I have managed to do is to put readers right in the center, in the epicenter, of events, the little fly on the wall, that gives us an often very jaundiced view, but really fascinating inside story of what was really happening and how different that was from the presentation to the world of what was happening.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Yuri Gagarin Was The First Man In Space

On April 12, 1961 the first human flew in space. 

“I see Earth! It is so beautiful!" said 27-year old Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut who was chosen among thousands for the mission. 

The flight lasted only 108 minutes and orbited the Earth only once. Gagarin was back in time for a grand state dinner to tell about this journey in space.

On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin, 27, became the first human to travel into space.

On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space, launched into orbit on the Vostok 3KA-3 spacecraft (Vostok 1).

Gagarin seen dressing in a heating/cooling garment worn under his orange pressure suit.

Yuri Gagarin seen dressing in a heating/cooling garment worn under his orange pressure suit.

The control panel of Vostok 1 spacecraft, which was designed to carry a single cosmonaut. Gagarin flew on autopilot through the whole mission and never manually operated the spacecraft.

This image is of the control panel of Vostok 1 spacecraft, which was designed to carry a single cosmonaut. The mission was manned by 27-year-old Yuri Gagarin. The VostokThe primary and secondary backup cosmonauts for the mission were Gherman Titov and Grigori Nelyubov. The assignments were formally made on April 8, four days before the mission. On April 12, 1961, Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth.

The Vostok spacecraft

This photo released by spacecraft manufacturer RSC Energia shows the Vostok spacecraft. On April 12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin launched into orbit on Vostok 1 to become the first human to fly in space.

Yuri Gagarin, pilot of the Vostok 1, is on the bus on the way to the launch. The cosmonaut behind Gagarin is German Titov, the back-up pilot who became pilot of Vostok 2.

In this image Yuri Gagarin, pilot of the Vostok 1, is on the bus on the way to the launch. The cosmonaut behind Gagarin is German Titov, the back-up pilot who became pilot of Vostok 2.

On the way to the launch pad

Russian spacecraft designer S. P. Korolev (partially obscured, in fedora hat) and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin approach the launch pad ahead of the April 12, 1961 launch of Vostok 1, the first human spaceflight.

Climbing into the Vostock 1 spacecraft

In this collage of photos posted by Russia's Federal Space Agency, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin has arrived at the Vostok 1 spacecraft, and climbs inside ahead of the April 12, 1961 launch that made him the first human in space.

The Vostok 3KA-3 spacecraft (Vostok 1)

The Vostok 3KA-3 spacecraft (Vostok 1) awaits the launch of Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961, which would make him the first human to travel into space.

Vostok 1 is seen with charring and its parachute on the ground after landing south west of Engels, in the Saratov region of southern Russia.

Here the re-entry capsule of the Vostok 3KA-3 (also known as Vostok 1) spacecraft (Vostok 1) is seen with charring and its parachute on the ground after landing south west of Engels, in the Saratov region of southern Russia.

On April 12, 1961, the era of human spaceflight began when the Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth in his Vostock I spacecraft. The flight lasted 108 minutes.

Gagarin never went back to space -- he was hailed as a national treasure and was never sent on dangerous missions. He was killed in an acident during a routine training flight in 1968 at age 34.

In 1968, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin trained for another space mission, but was killed in a plane crash before doing so. Here, Gagarin is shown just before that flight in a photo released by the Russian aerospace firm RSC Energia.

Want more Russian history? Check out...

Amazing Photos Of Moscow: Then And Now >

• Main content

The History of Space Exploration

During the time that has passed since the launching of the first artificial satellite in 1957, astronauts have traveled to the moon, probes have explored the solar system, and instruments in space have discovered thousands of planets around other stars.

Earth Science, Astronomy, Social Studies, U.S. History, World History

Apollo 11 Astronauts on Moon

A less belligerent, but no less competitive, part of the Cold War was the space race. The Soviet Union bested its rival at nearly every turn, until the U.S. beat them to the finish line by landing astronauts on the moon.

NASA photograph

We human beings have been venturing into outer space since October 4, 1957, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. This happened during the period of hostility between the U.S.S.R. and the United States known as the Cold War .

Sputnik’s launch shifted the Cold War to a new frontier, space. The space race, a competition for prestige and spectacle, was a less-violent aspect of the Cold War, the often-deadly clash between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. The endeavor was a soft-power ploy used to help win over potential nonaligned nations. Nonaligned nations were called the Third World — now seen as a disparaging term.

For several years, the two superpowers had been competing to develop missiles, called intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), to carry nuclear weapons between continents. In the U.S.S.R., the rocket designer Sergei Korolev had developed the first ICBM, a rocket called the R7, which began the space race. This competition became global news with the launch of Sputnik. Carried atop an R7 rocket, the Sputnik satellite sent out audio beeps from a radio transmitter.

After reaching space, Sputnik orbited Earth once every 96 minutes. The radio beeps were detected on the ground as the satellite passed overhead, so people around the world knew Sputnik was really in orbit. The U.S. was surprised that the U.S.S.R. had exceeded U.S. space capabilities. Furthermore, there was the fear the Soviets could now launch a bomb onto U.S. soil without a plane or a ship.

The origins of the space race began before the end of World War II . At the time, Germany was the world leader in rocket technology, creating the V2, the first operational, long-range rocket. This weapon of war pushed the U.S. and U.S.S.R. space exploration efforts, showing the dual nature of rocket technology. Prior to the launch of Sputnik, the United States was building its launch capability.

The United States made two failed attempts to launch a satellite into space before succeeding with a rocket that carried a satellite called Explorer on January 31, 1958. Explorer carried several instruments into space for conducting science experiments. One instrument was a Geiger counter for detecting cosmic rays. This was for an experiment operated by researcher James Van Allen, which, together with measurements from later satellites, proved the existence of what are now called the Van Allen radiation belts around Earth.

The team that achieved the first U.S. satellite launch consisted largely of German rocket engineers who had once developed ballistic missiles for Nazi Germany. Working for the U.S. Army at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, the German rocket engineers were led by Wernher von Braun, who had led the creation of Germany’s V2 rocket. His team used the V2 to build the more powerful Jupiter C, or Juno, rocket. Von Braun headed the U.S. rocket program, leading the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, until 1970.

At the close of WWII, the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. scrambled to recruit German rocket engineers and scientists to improve their rocket programs. The motivation for both governments was to improve their respective military technologies. Von Braun and most of his top deputies sought out U.S. forces to surrender to, preferring to work for the U.S. to the Soviets. The German specialists and some of their missiles and designs were relocated to the U.S. in what became known as Operation Paperclip (originally Project Overcast).

While the U.S. brought in von Braun and his scientists, except for Helmut Gröttrup, an expert on the V2 guidance system. The U.S.S.R., however, got more of the German technical personnel than the U.S. Homegrown talent was more involved in the leadership of the Soviet space program than the U.S. space program.

Von Braun and others on his team were members of the German Nazi Party. Von Braun was an officer in the SS, the Nazi paramilitary wing. He managed the science operations at the Mittelwerk factory, which used the labor of enslaved people. U.S. leadership was less concerned with their Nazi membership than using their technical expertise to defeat Japan, and later to gain an advantage over the Soviet Union. U.S. government officials lied about many of the Germans’ Nazi pasts to make working with them more acceptable to the American public.

In 1958, Though NASA leadership was almost entirely composed of White men, many of those doing the work as mathematicians, physicists, and engineers to put astronauts and machines into space were from underrepresented ethnicities and women of all ethnicities. Some examples of people of color who played important roles at NASA include mathematicians Katherine Johnson and Josephine Jue, engineers Miguel Hernandez and Walter Applewhite.

SEE HERE: Women of NASA and NASA’s West Area Computers

Space exploration activities in the United States were consolidated into a new government agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). When it began operations in October of 1958, NASA absorbed what had been called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and several other research and military facilities, including the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (the Redstone Arsenal) in Huntsville, Alabama.

Korolev’s R7 was the basis for the rocket family that would be the basis for the first launch successes and even the still-used Soyuz. Soviet’s space program had rival teams that worked on competing designs.

Von Braun’s influence extended far beyond the world of rocket scientists and space enthusiasts. He became well known after participating in three Disney-produced TV specials about space in the mid 1950s. Meanwhile, the role and accomplishments of von Braun’s Soviet counterpart, Korolev, were largely hidden by his government.

Both Korolev and von Braun shared a desire and commitment to exploring space, even though their governments preferred using rocket technology for military applications.

Despite the fact that Korolev drove the Soviet Space program’s early successes, he became a victim of one of Soviet Premier Josef Stalin’s political purges and was recalled from prison to head the rocket development program in 1944. After learning of the United States’ plan to launch an artificial satellite into space, it was Korolev who convinced and pushed the U.S.S.R. government to beat the U.S. in this endeavor, building the N1 rocket.

The U.S.S.R.’s win streak didn’t end there. A month after Sputnik’s launch, on November 3, 1957, the U.S.S.R. achieved an even more impressive space venture. This was Sputnik II, a satellite that carried a living creature, a dog named Laika.

The first human in space was Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who made one orbit around Earth on April 12, 1961, on a flight that lasted 108 minutes. A little more than three weeks later, NASA launched astronaut Alan Shepard into space, not on an orbital flight, but on a suborbital trajectory, a flight that goes into space but does not go all the way around Earth. Shepard’s suborbital flight lasted just over 15 minutes.

In addition to launching the first artificial satellite, the first dog in space, and the first human in space, the U.S.S.R. achieved other space milestones ahead of the United States under Korolev’s leadership. One of these milestones was Luna 2, which became the first human-made object to hit the Moon in 1959. Soon after that, the U.S.S.R. launched Luna 3. Less than four months after Gagarin’s flight in 1961, a second Soviet human mission orbited a cosmonaut around Earth for a full day. The U.S.S.R. also achieved the first spacewalk and launched the Vostok 6 mission, which made Valentina Tereshkova the first woman to travel to space.

Korolev was gearing U.S.S.R. to send a cosmonaut to the moon. The goal of sending a human to the moon became the final stage of the space race. Three weeks after Shepard’s flight, on May 25, U.S. President Robert F. Kennedy challenged the United States to an ambitious goal, declaring: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth."

During the 1960s, NASA made progress toward John F. Kennedy’s human moon landing goal with a program called Project Gemini, in which astronauts tested technology needed for future flights to the Moon, and tested their own ability to endure many days in spaceflight. Project Gemini was followed by Project Apollo, which did take astronauts into orbit around the Moon and to the lunar surface between 1968 and 1972.

In 1969, on Apollo11, the United States sent the first astronauts to the moon, and Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on its surface. During the landed missions, astronauts collected samples of rocks and lunar dust that scientists still study to learn about the Moon. As the U.S. manned space program rose, the Soviet program began to falter. There was internal disagreement about trying to send a human to the moon. Perhaps more importantly was Korolev’s death after a fumbled surgery in 1966. Today, the U.S. and the Russian Federation still have active space programs.

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Related Resources

60 Years Ago, the First Human to Reach Space Also Set This Incredible Record

We rarely talk about Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's other major milestone.

• During his historic journey, Gagarin set another record, becoming the first human to travel at hypersonic speeds.
• Gagarin’s flight marked a pivotal moment in the quest for hypersonic travel .

Sixty years ago this week, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to pierce Earth’s atmosphere and safely reach space. Gagarin spent 108 minutes strapped into his Vostok 1 spacecraft before returning to Earth as a hero.

But during his incredible journey on April 12, 1961, Gagarin also set another record when he became the first person to experience hypersonic flight.

✈ You love badass planes. So do we. Let’s nerd out over them together .

For an object to reach supersonic speeds, it must exceed the speed of sound, or Mach 1. The speed of sound, however, can change depending on the composition and temperature of the air through which the sound or object is traveling. Because the air is thinner and colder higher up in Earth’s atmosphere, the speed requirements to break this barrier at altitude are lower than they are at sea level.

Legendary test pilot and U.S. Air Force Major Chuck Yeager became the first person to reach this milestone when, in 1947, he piloted his Bell X-1 research plane to 45,000 feet above Earth’s surface, broke the local sound barrier, and reached top speeds of 700 miles per hour (mph), or Mach 1.06.

Only a few skilled pilots have traveled at hypersonic speeds—speeds reaching about five times the speed of sound. But much of the physics of hypersonic flight is still a mystery.

As a vehicle travels faster and faster past speed of sound, it generates a series of pressure waves. These pressure waves bunch up—imagine a pressure wave traffic jam—and form a shockwave that surrounds the aircraft, Javier Urzay, a senior researcher at the Center for Turbulence Research at Stanford University, tells Pop Mech . When the speed of a vehicle increases, the pressure and temperature of gas molecules in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle increase rapidly.

For aircraft traveling at supersonic speeds, forces like drag are the primary concern. But when an aircraft reaches hypersonic speeds, heat becomes the main focus.

“We don’t know how to estimate those thermal mechanical loads because we don’t understand the fundamental physical aspects of all the flow around aircraft at those high speeds,” Urzay says.

Furthermore, it takes a lot of computational power to make these estimates.

On his way back to Earth’s surface, Gagarin and his Vostok 1 capsule reportedly reached hypersonic speeds. A month later, Alan Shepard became the first American to experience hypersonic speeds, when his capsule surpassed Mach 5 during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.

The record for fastest-ever human travel, for what it’s worth, goes to the Apollo 10 crew, who in 1969 reached speeds of nearly 25,000 mph, or 30 times the speed of sound, as they free fell through Earth’s atmosphere. Technically, these weren’t controlled flights.

Six years after Gagarin’s famed flight, U.S. Air Force Major William J. Knight earned the title of “fastest man on Earth” when he piloted his North American X-15A-2 research rocket plane to speeds of Mach 6.7, or 4,520 mph. Dropped from the belly of a B-52 at an altitude of around 45,000 feet, the airplane roared to life, kicking off the roughly 8-minute powered portion of the flight.

The exterior of the X-15A-2—which was designed specifically to withstand high temperatures, decreased stability, and the intense forces exerted during high-speed travel— was covered in a nickel-chrome alloy coating that acted as a heat sink and kept the aircraft from getting too hot during its flight.

Between 1959 and 1968, 12 pilots conducted almost 200 test flights, all of which helped scientists and engineers understand the perils of hypersonic flight.

To this day, no controlled, human-piloted aircraft has ever surpassed Knight’s record.

And then there are uncrewed flights. A two-staged rocket called Project Bumper became the first to achieve hypersonic flight in 1949. The second stage of a V-2 sounding rocket reached Mach 6.7 when it launched from the New Mexico desert that same year. In 2004, NASA’s uncrewed X-43A set the record for fastest jet-powered flight when it briefly reached speeds of Mach 9.6, or about 6,363 mph, before slamming into the ocean.

In recent years, the U.S., China, Russia, and other countries have raced to develop plans for a variety of hypersonic weapons, from ballistic missiles like China’s WU-14 missile to specialized aircraft like Boeing’s hypersonic spy drone .

Urzay says we may have to wait a while for hypersonic commercial flights designed to ferry hundreds of passengers well past the Mach 5 boundary. Still, manufacturers like Boeing are working on concept planes that take off using regular turbofan engines but rely on ramjets, a type of air-breathing engine that uses a plane’s forward motion to compress air, to reach top speeds.

But don’t bother saving up your miles just yet. “We have a very small understanding of the fundamental physical processes that happen in the gaseous atmosphere around the aircraft at high Mach numbers,” says Urzay. “Those challenges still remain after 60 years.”

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Jennifer Leman is a science journalist and senior features editor at Popular Mechanics, Runner's World, and Bicycling. A graduate of the Science Communication Program at UC Santa Cruz, her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Scientific American, Science News and Nature. Her favorite stories illuminate Earth's many wonders and hazards.

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Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space Audio CD – Audiobook, April 13, 2021

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• Print length 1 pages
• Language English
• Publisher HarperCollins B and Blackstone Publishing
• Publication date April 13, 2021
• Dimensions 6.1 x 0.9 x 9.1 inches
• ISBN-10 1799956903
• ISBN-13 978-1799956907
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"A vivid account of the Cold War-era space race...This dramatic...entertaining and carefully researched history achieves liftoff."

" Beyond has the exhilaration of a fine thriller, but it is vividly embedded in the historic tensions of the Cold War and peopled by men and women brought sympathetically, and sometimes tragically, to life."

"Dramatic and dynamic. Stephen Walker's passion for his subject along with his exceptional research and attention to detail have brought my father's extraordinary journey vividly to life."

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperCollins B and Blackstone Publishing; Unabridged edition (April 13, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Audio CD ‏ : ‎ 1 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1799956903
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1799956907
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.1 x 0.9 x 9.1 inches
• #5,633 in Expeditions & Discoveries World History (Books)
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Short Wave: Space Camp

In our wildest dreams, we’re able to warp across the universe to witness its mysteries and discover its quirks up close. In this series, we do exactly that: Regina and Emily blast off into space and travel to the most distant, weirdest parts of our universe — from stars to black holes.

• About Short Wave
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From planets to black holes, we look at the oddities of space

Jets of gas being released from newly forming stars are captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. NPR/NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (NASA-JPL), Joel Green (STScI) hide caption

If the fabric of the universe is a flat, rubbery sheet, Earth is a pothole that bends the fabric of spacetime into a funnel around it. But what would it be like to overcome Earth’s gravity, lift off from the blue marble we call home and explore the far reaches of the universe?

We explore just that in the Short Wave Space Camp series. It's a 10-part episodic journey through the changing universe with Short Wave hosts Regina Barber and Emily Kwong.

We start with  how to get to outer space in the first place . From there, every Tuesday through Aug. 13, Short Wave will travel farther and earlier into spacetime.

Why we’re going to space

We’ve come a long way from Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to launch into space.

Scientists have moved far beyond the bounds of Earth's orbit. The James Webb Space Telescope is capturing the most detailed images yet of the infancy of the universe. NASA retrieved its first asteroid sample . Humans have not only gone to Earth's moon, but are now exploring both the sun, via the Parker Solar Probe , and the moons ringing other planets .

The Universe's Baby Pictures (Squee!) From The James Webb Space Telescope

The science powering human curiosity is more sophisticated than ever. Meanwhile, private corporations are fundamentally changing who gets to go to space and how.

Over a decade ago, NASA retired the Space Shuttle program , while SpaceX and now Boeing carry astronauts to the International Space Station. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are ferrying billionaires, like their owners, to space. Earlier this month, SpaceX successfully launched and returned the largest rocket ever built , intended to one day put boots on Mars.

Why the earliest galaxies are sparking drama and controversy among astronomers

As humans push outward into space, scientists are also thinking about planetary defense.

In 2022, NASA's DART mission successfully redirected the asteroid Dimorphous , demonstrating how we might one day divert a space rock on a collision course for earth. Plus, planetary defense experts run drills for how to fend off asteroids every couple of years. That's in spite of the fact that there isn't a substantially sized asteroid that would potentially impact Earth for the next hundred years, as Terik Daly , the planetary defense section supervisor at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory told NPR in a recent interview .

Technical advances like these were once unthinkable.

At the same time, lower Earth orbit is being crowded with space junk, some of which even falls back to Earth. Last year, a large battery pallet crash landed through the roof of a Florida home after detaching from the International Space Station. Events like this beg the question: Who does space belong to? And how do researchers responsibly advance science and space exploration when we still don’t fully understand the universe?

The importance of sustainable space exploration in the 21st century

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Every person has a role to play, and Short Wave wants listeners to be engaged in this evolving discourse. Which is why, all summer, we’re offering a primer on the basics of our universe – and weaving in the latest research, challenges, and opportunities for space exploration along the way.

How to mark your journey

Throughout the series, we'll meld basic physics with the latest research in astronomy, discussing everything from black holes and dark energy to dark matter and the life cycle of a star. We'll get into the human experience of living in space. Plus, we'll stretch Einstein’s thought experiment to its breaking point and ask the big questions: Did everything really begin with a bang? How is the universe going to end?

Subscribe to Short Wave on Spotify  and  Apple Podcasts to head back to camp with us! And be warned: At the end of the series, there will be a fun quiz based on scientific facts from each episode! When you pass the test, we’ll have a fun, customizable surprise.

More from Space Camp

This story is part of Short Wave 's  Space Camp series about all the weird, wonderful things happening in the universe. Check out more from the full series :

• Episode 1: From the physics of g-force to weightlessness: How it feels to launch into space
• Episode 2: Pluto isn’t a planet — but it gives us clues for how the solar system formed

More from Short Wave

Meet the Short Wave team

As we travel, email us your questions at [email protected] — we'd love to consider it for a future episode!

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave .

Special thanks to our friends at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Home of Space Camp®.

Watch Virgin Galactic's 1st commercial spaceflight launch live online in this livestream today

Four passengers will join four crew on the flight.

Update for 12:20 p.m. ET, June 29: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo space plane, VSS Unity has successfully landed, completing the company's first commercial spaceflight. See more images, video and read our full wrap story .

Virgin Galactic will livestream its first commercial spaceflight for free, and you can watch it online.

The company, which is part of billionaire Richard Branson 's Virgin Group, will send its first commercial mission to suborbital space on June 29. Events will begin at 11 a.m. EDT (1600 GMT, or 9 a.m. local time in New Mexico) on Virgin Galactic's website, which we will stream here on Space.com if possible.

Virgin Galactic plans to send six people into space (four crew and two pilots), with two people also in the carrier aircraft that will send the space plane aloft. The mission will launch from New Mexico's Spaceport America , the location of Virgin Galactic's commercial hub.

Photos: Meet the crew of Virgin Galactic's 1st commercial spaceflight Galactic 01

Virgin Galactic's spaceflight system includes four pilots across two vehicles: Two pilots aboard the carrier plane VMS Eve, and two pilots aboard the SpaceShipTwo space plane VSS Unity that flies into orbit.

The co-pilots of Eve this time around are commander Kelly Latimer and pilot Jameel Janjua, while the co-pilots of Unity are commander Mike Masucci and pilot Nicola Pecile.

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Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

Four passengers will fly on board Unity as well: 

• Pantaleone Carlucci, an engineer at the National Research Council of Italy;
• Colin Bennett, an astronaut instructor at Virgin Galactic;
• Col. Walter Villadei of the Italian Air Force, who is training for a "future orbital space mission" to the International Space Station, according to Virgin Galactic materials;
• Lt. Col. Angelo Landolfi, a physician with the Italian Air Force.

Virgin Galactic calls this mission Galactic 01, which supports a joint Italian Air Force and National Research Council (of Italy) research study called "Virtute 1." It will last about 90 minutes and include 13 experiments, mostly for medical applications.

Based on past flights, Eve will take off from the runway with Unity attached underneath. The two vehicles will separate at 50,000 feet (15,000 meters) and Unity will fly on its own to suborbital space using a rocket motor. Everyone aboard Unity will experience weightlessness for a few minutes and see Earth's curve against space.

 —   Photos: Virgin Galactic's 1st fully crewed spaceflight with Richard Branson

— Virgin Galactic trio, including the 1st woman, receives their commercial astronaut wings

 —   The first space tourists (photos)

Unity can hold at most six passengers at a time, and made its most recent flight on May 25 after nearly two years of fleet upgrades for maintenance and upgrade work . Virgin aims to fly commercial flights monthly, with the next one expected in early August.

If you want to join a flight, you'll need deep pockets as a ticket aboard VSS Unity costs $450,000 . Virgin Galactic plans to launch a new "Delta-class" space plane capable of flying to space once a week in 2026 to boost service.

Blue Origin , which has not released per-seat pricing, is also bringing tourists to space and is led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle hasn't flown since September 2022, however, when it suffered an anomaly while flying an uncrewed research effort.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before joining full-time. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House and Office of the Vice-President of the United States, an exclusive conversation with aspiring space tourist (and NSYNC bassist) Lance Bass, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, " Why Am I Taller ?", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University and a Bachelor of History from Canada's Athabasca University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science at several institutions since 2015; her experience includes developing and teaching an astronomy course at Canada's Algonquin College (with Indigenous content as well) to more than 1,000 students since 2020. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Mastodon: https://qoto.org/@howellspace

Former cryptocurrency company plans reality TV competition to pick next Blue Origin spaceflight crew

Watch SpaceX catch Starship Super Heavy booster with 'chopsticks' in this animation

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Nasa celebrates 10 years of human spaceflight’s next pioneers.

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Experienced spacewalkers, university students, flight controllers, and NASA team members at all stages of their career recently came together at Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) for an anniversary celebration that looked to the future as much as the past. The Office of STEM Engagement’s Micro-g Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Teams (Micro-g NExT) marked a decade of inspiring the next generation of space explorers with four days of exciting hands-on experiences and events commemorating those who have shaped the annual challenge.

From June 2-5, NASA welcomed 17 student teams from 13 U.S. colleges and universities to the NBL for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The 87 students spent months designing and building devices or tools that could support lunar surface spacewalks and future Artemis missions, earning a chance to test their unique prototypes at the NBL.

Teams chose from four design challenge options – create an anchoring device for a lunar flagpole, design a lunar mapbook, develop a lunar tool carrier, or create a target recognition system camera for post-landing search and rescue operations – and submitted technical proposals for Micro-g NExT staff to review in October 2023. The selected student teams were announced in November and introduced to their mentors in December. Those mentors provided continuous support and expertise as teams manufactured their prototypes, submitted their preliminary design review, and completed initial tests prior to traveling to Houston. Mentors represented Johnson organizations including the Flight Operations Directorate, Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program, Engineering, and the Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate.

Another familiar face at Johnson was involved in the challenge, as well: former NASA astronaut Steve Swanson, who was the Boise State University team’s faculty advisor. Swanson is a three-time spaceflight veteran who completed four spacewalks and logged and a total of 195 days in space, which enabled him to provide the students with valuable design insights.

Once they arrived at the NBL, students received a pre-test briefing from Flight Director Rebecca Wingfield about best practices for communication from a mission control perspective. She also debriefed with teams to provide students with feedback that enhanced their learning experience and gave them a deeper understanding of their projects’ impact on the Artemis campaign.

NASA astronaut Nicole Mann supported students in the test control room as they underwent testing and were in direct communication with the diver using their prototype in the pool. Mann also conducted a series of post-test debriefs with several teams to give them insight on how their designs were helpful and how they can improve.

Students also had the opportunity to participate in a poster session at Johnson’s Teague Auditorium to showcase their products and the process from proposal to completion of testing. Artemis Student Challenge Awards were presented to top teams in three categories – Innovation, Pay it Forward (for community engagement and outreach), and Artemis Educator (for a team’s faculty advisor).

The whirlwind week kicked off with a reception for Micro-g NExT alumni who were recognized for their past efforts and dedication to space exploration. Certificates of appreciation were given to the program’s ‘pioneers’ – the NASA employees, contractors, and interns who helped to create Micro-g NExT 10 years ago. 

Several tools made by student teams during prior challenges were on display, including a zip-tie cutter designed by the Lone Star College-Cy Fair team in spring 2019 that was used aboard the International Space Station by European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano. Members of that team shared their Micro-g NExT experience with reception attendees. “It gives students the best real-world experience and learning opportunity I have seen,” said James Philippi.

Students and staff also heard from several Micro-g NExT alumni during a Q&A panel. Panelists included Harriet Hunt, CRONUS flight controller trainee; Aaron Simpson, xEMU Portable Life Support System engineer intern; Alexis Vance, environmental systems flight controller; Kim Wright, electrical, mechanical, and external thermal systems engineer; and Sam Whitlock, spaceflight systems engineering intern at Axiom Space. Each shared how Micro-g NExT impacted them personally and professionally, underscoring the long-term value of participating in the challenge and the program’s ability to attract next-generation talent to the agency.

Adding to this legacy, two of the 2024 Micro-g NExT participants ended their challenge experience by starting work with NASA. Alana Falter from the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign returned to NASA as a Pathways Intern, and Adrian Garcia from the University of Houston-Clear Lake returned as a contractor with Barrios Technology.

Another nod to the challenge’s impact was a special 10-year patch and logo designed by Justin Robert from the Michoud Assembly Facility through the NASA Spark challenge to commemorate the Micro-g NExT milestone.

“Student design challenges have been a critical pipeline for both NASA internship participants and preparing students to be successful in STEM careers,” said Jamie Semple, NASA activity manager for Micro-g NExT. “By participating in these activities, students have the opportunity to create a product that could be part of spaceflight history, all while building essential skills for the next step in their career.” Semple added, “We also see the challenge’s impact with former participants now becoming our Micro-g NExT challenge owners. These people are now leading the program into the future and continuing the legacy of creating leaders in the STEM workforce and for the NASA community.”

Reflecting on their experience, Smith Juback from Clemson University said working cooperatively with teammates was their favorite part of this design challenge. “We all had different ideas and ways to solve different problems and being able to incorporate everyone’s ideas together made us all smarter in the end,” he said. “I think we all learned so much individually about how to make and design a product, and we grew as people, students, and designers.”

Students from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln team said, “Working with astronauts in a professional environment like the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory is about precision since time is so valuable and you have to make the most of it. Back at home, we have several hours to test our project and if it breaks it breaks. But in the NBL, we have 12 minutes to run through seven tests. This experience is something you can only get here at Micro-g NExT.”

After four days of learning, testing, and networking, Micro-g NExT has reached a decade of providing greater knowledge and inspiration to youth across the country. As one of NASA’s Artemis student challenges, Micro-g NExT will continue to offer undergraduate students the opportunity to design and create mission-ready hardware to benefit the future of deep space exploration. Learn more about Micro-g NExT and other Artemis student challenges at https://stem.nasa.gov/artemis/ .

Planetary parade on display in the night sky this weekend

The moon is currently in a waning crescent phase, which occurs after a full moon. during this phase, the crescent shape of the moon will appear to be to shrink until it reaches its new moon status on july 5..

See what's new in the journey to reach the Moon

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Stargazers wishing to see a planetary parade will get their first chance this weekend when Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon will all be visible in the night sky.

According to planetary experts at NASA , the three planets, along with the crescent-shaped Moon, will be visible in the eastern sky before daybreak for the next several days.

If skies are clear, all should be visible without the use of binoculars or a telescope, but it is always advised to use aids to see the planets in all their glory.

With binoculars, some of Jupiter’s moons might be noticeable, and telescopes have previously helped with spotting Saturn’s rings from Earth.

Locales that have a clear view of the eastern horizon without the influence of light pollution have the best chance of seeing the parade.

The Moon is currently in a waning crescent phase, which occurs after a full moon. During this phase, the crescent shape of the Moon will appear to shrink until it reaches its new moon status on July 5th.

Rendering showing the planets Saturn, Mars and Jupiter.

WATCH OUT FOR THESE ASTRONOMICAL EVENTS IN 2024

If promises of a planetary parade sound familiar, erroneous claims went viral earlier this month, telling skygazers that six planets would be visible to the naked eye.

NASA experts said, in reality, only two planets were visible without the use of technology.

Despite promises of spectacular planetary parades, astronomers say 2024 has not disappointed with the largest display of Northern Lights in decades and the total solar eclipse that traveled across America in April.

The moon takes about 29.5 days to complete a full cycle.

SEE THE OBJECTS HUMANS LEFT BEHIND ON THE MOON

If you miss June’s final event, three planets are expected to be visible in mid-July.

Mercury will be apparent just after sunset on July 15 and should be fairly bright, while both Mars and Uranus will appear close in the sky.

The Full Buck Moon will peak during the morning hours on July 21, and the Southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower will occasionally be visible from mid-July through the middle of August.

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Aggie Judo Champ Shares Journey From The Netherlands To Texas A&M

Paolo Maaskant ’26 was only 5 years old when he started judo lessons. At first, it was just a way for him and his older brother, Dario ’24, to burn off extra energy. But it soon turned into a passion that would end up leading him from his home in Rotterdam, Netherlands, to Texas A&M University, where his athletic and academic pursuits intertwined.

Maaskant’s dedication to judo was unmatched as he earned his black belt at age 16 and was invited to compete on the Dutch National Team, based on his placement in ranking tournaments. During high school, his passion for judo collided with a new interest in mathematics. After three years of business economics and mathematics classes, Maaskant found he was drawn to the latter subject and its logical nature — something he says he also loves about judo.

“With judo you have to prepare a throw by putting someone in the right positions and get them off-balance,” Maaskant said. “With math, especially with mathematical proofs, you must set the conditions before you can prove something. It’s challenging, if not impossible, to do either without proper preparation.”

As the end of high school drew near, Maaskant realized he needed to prioritize his education and future career. Unfortunately, as he and his brother considered college options, it became evident that if they stayed in the Netherlands, continuing to practice judo would be difficult. Balancing their schoolwork with judo was a challenge in high school because they had to drive one to two hours to practice each day, five days a week. College presented additional obstacles, considering that pursuing a demanding degree like mathematics would leave even less time for judo. In addition, all the best universities in the Netherlands were located on the opposite side of the country from where the boys practiced.

Maroon Black Belts

In search of a university that could accommodate their academic and athletic aspirations, Dario searched for opportunities outside of their home country. His search led to one of the best collegiate judo programs in the United States at Texas A&M. Impressed by the prestige of becoming an Aggie, Dario made the first move to College Station to pursue a degree in business management in 2020, with Paolo following two years later.

When he arrived in Aggieland, Paolo knew he wanted to major in applied mathematics with an actuarial emphasis and minor in economics. Discovering the  STEM to Stocks Club  and the  Master of Science in Finance program , which allows him to earn his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in only five years, confirmed that he was in the right place.

“While I really enjoyed business economics classes in high school, I liked math classes even more, and that is why I study math,” Maaskant said. “Now I can combine both my interests, business economics and math, with pursuing a bachelor’s degree in math and a master’s degree in finance.”

At Texas A&M, Maaskant even discovered an aspect of mathematics he had not previously considered. During high school, his mathematics classes focused on the basics of solving math problems. He learned how to apply mathematical concepts, but he never learned why those concepts worked. However, that all changed as he began classes at Texas A&M, where he learned about proofing math. Somewhere in the process of formulating a deductive argument for a mathematical statement to show why the statement works logically, Maaskant found something novel to appreciate about his favorite subject.

“I know I chose the right major,” Maaskant said. “Although proving or understanding the deeper meaning of math is hard, it has helped me ‘unlock’ a new way of looking at problems — something I would not have learned in any other major.”

This new way of looking at problems has given Maaskant an advantage as he continues to dominate on the  Texas A&M Judo Team , securing first place at the 2024 Collegiate National Championships hosted at Texas A&M earlier this spring and pacing the team to a second-place finish while also securing an invitation to the World University Games. His experience as a black belt also makes him a knowledgeable mentor for new judo club members.

“Winning in front of our home crowd was great,” Maaskant said. “I especially enjoy leading practice with the other black belts, because I can get to know the new people better and guide them in the right direction.”

Embracing life as an Aggie, Maaskant also joined the  Sophomores Leading and Motivating (SLAM)  Sophomore Leadership Organization this year and attends as many  Midnight Yell Practices  as possible. With such a busy schedule, his advice for future international students is to take advantage of everything Texas A&M has to offer but make sure you manage your time well.

“You can do as much as you want in college, such as participating in organizations,” he said, “but at the end of the day, it always comes at a cost of something else.”

Maaskant says his favorite discovery since moving to Texas is  Buc-ee’s . When he first visited the iconic gas station a year ago, he thought he was entering a Disney attraction. Now, his room is full of Buc-ee’s merchandise. He even plans on dressing up as the Buc-ee’s beaver for Halloween this year.

“I just need a T-shirt to finish the outfit!”

Media contact:  Shana K. Hutchins, [email protected]

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