Explanation:
On April 12th, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut
Yuri
Alexseyevich Gagarin became the first human in space.
His remotely controlled
Vostok 1
spacecraft lofted him to an altitude of 200 miles and carried him
once around planet Earth.
Commenting on the first
view from space
he reported, "The sky is very dark; the Earth is bluish.
Everything is seen very clearly".
Alan Shepard, the first US astronaut,
would not be launched until almost a month later and then
on a comparatively short suborbital flight.
Born on March 9, 1934, Gagarin was a military pilot before being
chosen for the first group of cosmonauts in 1960.
As a result of his
historic flight he became an
international hero and legend.
Killed when his MIG jet crashed during a training flight on
March 27, 1968, Gagarin was given a hero's funeral,
his ashes interred in the Kremlin Wall.
On yet another April 12th, in 1981, NASA launched the
first space shuttle.
digg_url = 'http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080412.html'; digg_skin = 'compact';
