Crushed in his seat, Yuri Gagarin sees flames outside his ship and prepares to die. His voice breaks the tense silence at ground control:"I'm burning." Goodbye, comrades ". It will finally land a few minutes later. Before him, no man had ventured into space. That was sixty years ago.
If he is chosen among the elite of Soviet fighter pilots, it is for his skills and his nerves of steel. On April 12, 1961, the mission is secret. At 27, Yuri Gagarin slips into the Vostok 1, topped off with a rocket designed to propel a nuclear charge. From then on, no one can say if he will survive. The most optimistic don't give it a one in two chance.
He himself had anticipated. Two days before takeoff, Gagarin had written a farewell letter to his wife, Valentina, sharing his pride at having been chosen for this historic mission, while taking care to console her. “I trust the equipment completely, it must not let me down. But if something happens, I ask you, Valyusha, not to be broken by sorrow “, he wrote, calling her by her nickname.
The authorities will keep this letter to finally give it to her seven years later after the death of her husband in a plane crash. She then never remarried.
In the early 1960s, the Soviet space program intended to secure its dominance over the United States by putting a man in space. Also, Gagarin's pioneering flight was scheduled just after the launch of the world's first satellite:Sputnik (in October 1957). “People slept in their offices and factory outlets, like in wartime “, recalls the cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin who will fly five times in space.
Like Gagarin, Soviet officials had prepared for the worst. No safety system had in fact been installed to save the cosmonaut in the event of an explosion on takeoff, nor even for afterwards. The authorities had written three bulletins for the official TASS news agency:one announcing a successful theft, a second in the event of a problem and a third testifying to the worst.
In addition to potential engine failures and other equipment malfunctions, scientists also doubted an individual's ability to withstand spaceflight conditions. Many at the time feared that a pilot would go crazy in orbit.
Problems, Gagarin suffered a few. As soon as he entered Vostok 1, the light confirming the closing of the hatch did not come on. Two engineers are then dispatched to the site, remove several dozen screws, identify and repair a faulty contact and screw everything back on just in time for the planned launch.
For its part, the orbit had been planned so that the spacecraft would descend on its own after a week in the event of an engine failure. A problem during takeoff eventually took the ship into a higher orbit. In the event of an engine failure, Gagarin would never have been able to return to Earth.
While the engine was performing as expected, a loss of fuel eventually took the ship on an unexpected re-entry path, at a higher speed than intended. For ten long minutes, Gagarin finds himself exposed to forces beyond his control. "There was a moment of two or three seconds when the instruments started to fade before my eyes" , he will recall.
Gagarin is about to return to Earth. A soft landing system having not yet been designed, the cosmonaut ejects from the module and deploys a parachute. On the way down, he has to play with a sticky valve on his suit to start breathing outside air. He will finally land safely in a field near the Volga, in the Saratov region.
Airlifted to Moscow, Gagarin is greeted as a hero before being saluted by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Over the next few years, he would visit dozens of countries to celebrate his historic mission. He will finally be killed in a plane crash on March 27, 1968, at the age of 34. A few months later, the United States will send its first men to the Moon.
