The spacecraft, stuck in orbit since 1972 after an unsuccessful mission to Venus, plunged into the Indian Ocean.

He would become a star after the launch of the Vostok space capsule on April 12, 1961. Gagarin’s physique was perfect for the risky mission – the cosmonaut flying the Vostok could not weight ...

This was the Soviet Union's next big move in the "space race" after it launched the first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. His mission was called Vostok 1, and it involved both a Vostok rocket and ...

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin lifted off from Baikonur in the Vostok I capsule, becoming the first human in space. A year later, Soviet engineers described a space station comprised of modules ...

Could Mercury be that much smaller than the Soviet spacecraft?’ And that was indeed the case. The Vostok spacecraft weighed over 10,000 pounds. The Mercury spacecraft, with the escape tower ...

The cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin went down in history as the first human ever to enter space. From humble beginnings ... orbiting the globe once in his craft, Vostok 1. Officially, he came back to ...

On the morning of May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard crawled into the cramped Mercury capsule, "Freedom 7," at Launch ...

The Gagarin Start is the oldest launch pad at the Baikonur spaceport, from which a Vostok spacecraft with the world’s first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on board blasted off into outer space NUR ...