On board of the Vostok 1, his flight determined a temporary advanced of URSS in the well-known "Space Race"

poechali! (Let's go!). With this word Juri Gagarin replied to Korolev, while the 5 rocket engines was starting to take him in orbit for the first time ever for a human. This mission gave the maximum glory to the URSS space program, began with the Sputnik mission in 1957, and a big advanced on the USA in the so called "Space Race".

The historic context

During the final years of 2nd World War, Germany was losing fight after fight retreating after the initial advance: Americans from West, Soviets from East. In that period Germany was studying and using a medium-long range weapon, the V1 missile, and its successor, the V2. Cause of the retreating, Americans and Soviets found the scientists and the projects of these missiles, seizing everything they could find.Wernher Von Braun, the greatest scientist of them, surrendered to US forces and worked for them and next for NASA. On the contrary, Soviets seized the projects.

At the end of 50s, precisely in October 1957, URSS launched for the first ever, an object in space, the Sputnik 1: the "Space Race" had officially begun. For the first 4-5 years, USA could not reply to this advance, even because URSS had built up the Bajkonur cosmodrome, a rocket launch pad. For these reasons URSS got an important advance during the first 4-5 years during the Space Race. 

The highest success: Yuri's flight

After sending the Sputnik 1 and others life forms, dogs in particular, URSS was ready for the most difficult challenge: an human space mission. At the age of 27, Yuri Gagarin was sent in orbit for about 1 hour and 40 minutes, completing one single orbit around Earth. Watching Earth he said

The sky is very black, the Earth is blue. Everything can be seen very clearly  

Yuri Gagarin was essentially a passenger, in fact all the commands were controlled by remote on Earth. After one single orbit, the capsule re-entered on Earth and, at the 7.000 feet high, Yuri jumped with the parachute. After the Vostok 1, he never flew into space again: he was chosen as backup pilot for the Soyuz 1 mission, in which Vladimir Komarov died.    Yuri Gagarin died because a plane crash in 1968  

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