60 years ago, Gagarin flew into space: a special video from Google and eyewitness memories

On April 12, Google released a touching video dedicated to Cosmonautics Day. It contains an appeal to Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. His flight took place exactly 60 years ago.

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In a video entitled “Message to Yuri Gagarin,” astronauts, scientists, directors, students, and writers addressed Yuri Gagarin and told what humanity had achieved thanks to his flight into space.

“60 years ago the first man, Yuri Gagarin, went into space. His flight continues to inspire space explorers to this day. This is a message from people from all over the world especially for Yuri Alekseevich. In it, we tell him about the amazing things that we have discovered in space during this time - about what became possible thanks to him,” says the description of the video.

“Russian Roulette”: how Gagarin’s flight was prepared

Yuri Gagarin's flight into space on April 12, 1961 was the victory of the Soviet Union in the space race with the United States. His return to Earth was a triumph, which was impossible to dispute, writes Air force.

Gagarin performed an act that required incredible courage and courage from a person. He went into space, which was then almost unknown, on a ship without a rescue system, on a rocket, which had as many accidents as there were successful launches. A very small and very simple spacecraft flew around the Earth, launched by a ballistic rocket, and the astronaut sitting in it could hardly influence anything.

The flight assignment itself, issued by the state commission on April 8, 1961, consisted of the word “check” repeated many times: “Carry out a one-orbit flight around the Earth at an altitude of 180-230 kilometers lasting 1 hour 30 minutes with a landing in a given area. The purpose of the flight is to check the possibility of a person staying in space on a specially equipped ship, check the equipment of the ship in flight, check the connection of the ship with the Earth, and make sure that the means of landing for the ship and the astronaut are reliable.”

The Vostok launch vehicle, which carried the spacecraft of the same name, was developed on the basis of the R-7 rocket, a two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile that made its first flight in August 1957. In the same year, with its help, the first artificial Earth satellite was launched. In 1960, the R-7 was adopted by the Strategic Missile Forces.

The design of the R-7 turned out to be very successful - rockets of this family still remain the only rockets in Russia for manned space flights. This is a completely reliable space vehicle - outdated, but guaranteeing the delivery of the ship into orbit.

However, in 1961, things were quite different.

“If we proceed from modern standards of launch vehicle reliability, then by April 1961 we had no reason for optimism. Even for commercial launches of unmanned machines, in particular communications satellites, in the 1980s, according to international standards, it was necessary to use carriers that had at least eight successful launches in a row,” wrote Boris Chertok in the book “Rockets and People.”

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“Of the five satellites launched in 1960 to test the systems, four took off. Of these four, three entered orbit and two landed. Of the two who returned, only one landed normally! It was absolutely necessary to have two or three more successful unmanned [launches] before human launch,” he wrote.

Expert, head of the Institute of Space Policy Ivan Moiseev said that the R-7 rocket actually did not have an emergency rescue system. And the flight resembled Russian roulette - the chances of success were 50 to 50.

Just before the flight, three TASS messages were prepared: one “successful”, which was transmitted after the flight, the second - that the Soviet cosmonaut had landed outside the USSR and needed help or rescue, and the third, which reported his death.

Almost perfect

On April 12, 1961, during Gagarin's flight, the rocket performed almost perfectly. But there are no trifles in space technology - this “almost” as a result could have cost Gagarin his life.

At the last stage, the rocket control system, which obeyed radio signals from the Earth, did not respond to the signal, and before the automatic backup radio communication was activated, the Vostok with Gagarin rose several tens of kilometers higher. TThis scenario was not thought out in advance. Vostok was designed in such a way that it would return back even if the braking system failed during deorbit - if the ship had not oriented itself upon entering the atmosphere and had not turned on the braking engines, it would have returned anyway, braking naturally. But after five to seven days.

The ship's life support system could function for 10 days, but the designers assumed that the orbit would be calculated. According to Chertok, if the ship’s orientation system had failed before landing or another accident had occurred, the Vostok would have landed 15-20 days later. But Gagarin did not have them in stock.

As a result, Vostok landed almost without problems. This “almost” also made the first cosmonaut nervous. After turning off the braking engine, the ship began to rotate around both of its axes at a speed of about 30 degrees per second. Gagarin could no longer do anything in such a situation. Subsequently, it turned out that the instrument compartment was not separated from the descent module. Fortunately, the automation disconnected it after some time, and the descent vehicle ball stabilized.

"Raw" ship

There is nothing surprising in the fact that the first flight was not without emergency situations - the ship was rather “raw”.

Firstly, the soft landing system was not implemented in it, as a result of which it was necessary to use ejection and a separate descent with the astronaut's parachute. The fact that Gagarin, having actually been in space, did not overcome the last kilometers to the ground in a ship, was subsequently carefully concealed.

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Changes had to be made to the design of the ship sometimes at the very last moment. When Gagarin was weighed in his spacesuit before the flight, they found out that he weighed several kilograms more than the designers expected. The idea of ​​replacing him with the lighter Titov was not accepted - since January 1961, Gagarin was approved in all documents as the future first cosmonaut.

“Korolev sent engineers to cut off the extra cables from the ship at night. They basically cut off this emergency detonation system - of course, there were no explosives on the manned ship, but the system itself remained,” says the writer.

At the very last moment before the launch, when the cosmonaut was already in the spacecraft, the automatics suddenly issued a message about a leaky closed hatch. Before the flight, literally in a few tens of minutes, the installers opened 30 locks, checked the hatch for leaks, found faulty contacts that gave a false signal, and repaired them.

How Gagarin landed

Having made a revolution around the Earth in 108 minutes, at 10:55 am cosmonaut Yu.A. Gagarin landed in a potato field in the Saratov region. The first to see him was the forester's wife with her five-year-old granddaughter, who were planting potatoes in the field. The girl has grown up, but she remembers that day in detail. How it was she told Air force.

While planting potatoes, at some point the girl turned around in the field and saw “something orange, beautiful, it’s unclear what.” According to Rita Nurskanova, Gagarin himself approached her and her grandmother, asked her grandmother to unbutton his helmet.

“His face opened and he immediately began to smile,” recalls Rita.

When asked where he was from, Gagarin replied: “I’m from heaven.”

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They went to the cabin. Soon the collective farmers from the fields also ran there. The girl saw that Gagarin was lying on the field and his spacesuit was being taken off. Then a helicopter arrived and took him away. So Rita herself - the girl who saw it all - became part of history.

She says that Gagarin wrote letters to her family, grandmother and mother answered, and the girl carried these letters to school, believing that as many people as possible should find out about this. The letters were read by the whole school.

She is still very proud that the first Soviet cosmonaut descended on their field.

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