On April 12, 1961, the first manned spacecraft, Vostok 1 , was launched from the Cosmodrome in Baikonur. In it was the cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, then 27 years old. He became the first man in space.
As is well known, the journey went well. After traveling around the globe, he landed 108 minutes later and gained international attention and was awarded several medals and titles, including the Order of Lenin and “Hero of the Soviet Union”, the highest honorary title awarded in the Soviet Union.
Gagarin died on March 27, 1968, just 34 years old, during a training flight when his aircraft, a Soviet MiG-15, crashed.
In the same year, the city of Gzhatsk changed its name to Gagarin in honor of him, and a training center in the Star City near Moscow was renamed the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Center. A 40-meter-high monument was also built in his capital in his memory.
Gagarin also got the lunar crater Gagarin and the asteroid 1772 Gagarin named after him.
