Vostok 1 was the first spacecraft to carry a human, Yuri A. Gagarin, into space, occurring 25 days prior to the first U.S. suborbital flight. Vostok 1 is still 7 km from the ground when the hatch of the spacecraft is released, and two seconds later Gagarin uses the ejection seat to leave the capsule. Vostok, any of a series of manned Soviet spacecraft, the initial flight of which carried the first human being into space.
Gagarin was the first human to see our planet from space and that launched him into celebrity status and he toured around the world. The Vostok series included six launchings over a two-year period (1961–63). At 2.5 km altitude, the main parachute is deployed from the Vostok spacecraft.
This mission was the first human spaceflight ever.Launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome; landing of Yuri Gagarin near Smelovka north of Usmorye (26 km southwest of Engels); the empty spaceecraft landed at 07:48 UTC. Vostok 1 Worksheets.
Launched on April 12, 1961, Vostok 1, carrying cosmonaut Yury A. Gagarin, made a single orbit of Earth before reentry. The Vostok 1 mission lasted for 108 minutes and the trip around the earth’s orbit at 17,500 mph took less than an hour and a half. 27-year-old Yuri Gagarin was the only crew member of Vostok.The Vostok spacecraft was designed to carry a single cosmonaut.