60 years after Yuri Gagarin’s space feat

Crushed against the pilot’s seat by the powerful G-force, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin he saw flames outside his spaceship and prepared to die. His voice broke the tense silence at ground control: “I’m on fire. Goodbye, comrades.”

Gagarin was unaware that what he was observing from an outbreak was a cloud of plasma that engulfed Vostok 1 during his re-entered the atmosphere earthly, and that he was still on the verge of returning home safe and sound.

It was his calm composure under the pressure that helped him to become the first human to arrive in space 60 years ago.

Gagarin’s self-control was a key factor in the success of his pioneering 108-minute flight. The mission of April 12, 1961 had technical breakdowns and emergenciesFrom a capsule hatch that had not been properly closed to problems with the parachute at the last moment before landing.

From the moment 20 pilots of the Soviet Air Force were chosen for the first manned space flight, Gagarin’s calm character, ability to learn quickly and his big smile made him a favorite.

Two days before takeoff, Gagarin, 27, wrote a farewell letter to his wife, Valentina, expressing pride in being chosen to fly Vostok 1 but also trying to comfort her in the event of her death.

“I totally trust the team, you must not disappoint me. But if anything happens, Valyusha, I ask you not to be overcome by regret,” he wrote, using a diminutive for his words. wife.

The authorities kept the letter and eventually handed it over to Gagarin’s widow. seven years later, after his death in a plane crash. She never remarried.

Hero of the USSR

Gagarin’s pioneering flight, during which he orbit the Earth, made him a hero in the Soviet Union and an international celebrity. After putting the world’s first satellite into orbit with the successful launch of Sputnik in October 1957, the Soviet space program rushed to secure US dominance by putting a man in space.

“The goal was set, and people were sleeping in their offices and workshops, like in wartime,” recalled Fyodor Yirchikhin, a Russian cosmonaut who would end up making five trips into space.

In its desire to win over the Americans, the Soviet space and rocket program suffered a series of failures in 1960, including a disastrous explosion on a launch pad in October in which 126 people were killed. One of the victims was the head of the Missile Force, Mitrofan Nedelin.

Like Gagarin, Soviet officers were ready to worst. Not installed a security system to save the cosmonaut in case there is another rocket explosion, either on take-off or later.

Authorities produced three versions of statements about Gagarin’s flight for the official TASS news agency: one announced a successful flight, another cited problems, and the third described a mission. ended in disaster.

In addition to possible engine failures and other technical issues, scientists doubted a person’s ability to resist flight conditions space. Many feared that the pilot would go crazy in orbit.

Soviet engineers prepared for this eventuality by developing a fully automatic control system. As an additional precaution, the pilot would receive a sealed envelope with a secret code to activate manual controls. The theory was that a person who could enter the code had to be fairly sane as to the handling of the vessel.

However, everyone in the space program loved Gagarin so much that a top flight instructor and engineer acted on their own and shared the secret code with him before the flight to save him the hassle of handling the envelope in case emergency.

The problems

The problems started from the beginning. When Gagarin climbed on Vostok 1, a light confirming the closing of the hatch did not light up. Working at a breakneck pace, an engineer and co-worker removed 32 screws, found and repaired a faulty contact, and put the screws back in just in time for the scheduled take-off time.

Sitting in the capsule, Gagarin whistled a song. “Poyekhali! (“Here we go!”), He exclaimed as the rocket took off.

In another precautionary measure, the orbit was designed such that the spacecraft descended on its own after one week if an engine failure left her adrift. Instead, a problem caused him to be reached upper orbit, which would have resulted in the death of Gagarin if the engine had failed in this phase.

Although the engine performed as expected for the return trip, a fuel leak caused an unexpected back-to-school route and at a higher speed, which caused the vessel to spin uncontrollably for 10 long minutes.

Gagarin later said that he almost passed out when he suffered a g-force that was 10 times that of gravity. “There was a moment, lasting two or three seconds, when the instruments started to fade before my eyes,” he says.

Seeing a cloud of plasma around his ship as it reentered, he thought the capsule was on fire.

With a soft landing system yet to be designed, Gagarin exited the module in his spacesuit and deployed a parachute. On his way down he had to struggle with a valve to start breathing the outside air. A reserve parachute opened in addition to the main one, making it difficult for him to control the descent, although he managed to land safely. on a field near the Volga in the Saratov region.

Gagarin was airlifted to Moscow to greet a hero, greeted by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and greeted by enthusiastic crowds who celebrated his flight as a triumph equivalent to victory in World War II. Until his death at the age of 34, he enjoyed international fame and visited a dozen countries to celebrate his historic mission.

“The colossal propaganda effect of the launch of Sputnik, and in particular of the flight of Gagarin, was very significant,” said Vadim Lukashevich, a Moscow-based aviation and space specialist. .

His death

Gagarin died on a test flight on March 27, 1968. But the circumstances of his death have been kept secret for years.

He died doing one of the things he loved the most: fly. The MIG-15 plane he was piloting with his instructor Vladimir Sergyogin crashed in a spin, sinking several meters to the ground. Gagarin was 34 years old. What happened?

His death gave way to another legend, a mixture of conspiracy theories and speculation. The government commission reported that the fatal accident was due to the fact that Gagarin and his instructor attempted to dodge a civilian target, a balloon probe, with an unforeseen maneuver.

Death shocked the Russians in such a way that in the press it was even said that Gagarin was drunk or that he is not dead, except that he was confined in a psychiatric hospital. Even absurd ideas of an alien abduction. A former lieutenant colonel, Boris Murasov, has written several books accusing the KGB of being behind the incident.

It wasn’t until several years later, when the Kremlin gave the green light to tell the truth, that the ex-astronaut Aleksey Leonov, the first man to take a spacewalk in 1965, has unveiled his own side of the story.

Leonov was part of the commission of inquiry into the accident in Gagarin but, as he explained, although he always wanted to clarify the details of the fatal accident, he was unable to do so due secrecy surrounding the case.

According to Leonov, what caused Gagarin’s death was not a hot air balloon, but a Su-15 supersonic jet which was being tested that day. The flight of this aircraft was to take place at an altitude of 10,000 meters and not at 500 meters as it actually happened. This “procedural violation,” as defined by the veteran astronaut, caused a shock wave affecting Gagarin’s flight.

“Data in the report suggests the two jets should not have been more than ten miles apart,” Leonov said.

Space race

Gagarín’s feat was surpassed just 16 months later by the United States, when it put to the first man on the moon.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended an era of rivalry. Russia’s efforts to develop new rockets and spacecraft have suffered successive delays, and the country has continued to rely on Soviet technology.

In the deadlock, the criticized Roscosmos space agency focused on an expensive plan to build a new headquarters on the site of a previously dismantled rocket factory.

Clarín writes with information from Associates Press

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