1961

By Angela Lennhouts

Flash Back Moscow executive summary by darmansjah

It was a great day for the Soviet Union-and for all of humankind. Fifty years ago, on april 12, 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space, rocketing through the stratosphere in a cramped Vostok capsule. His two-hour flight took him 326 kilometers above the earth’s surface, where he completed an orbit of the planet before hurtling back toward a landing site near the Russian village of Smelovaka. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, Gagarin’s historical mission galvanized the space race between the United States and the USSR, leading ultimately to the first moon landing and the development of NASA’s space shuttle program. But while the latter has now been retired, our off-planet adventures seem to have only just begun, with space tourism as the next frontier to be conquered, maybe sooner than we think-Russian firm Orbital Technologies recently announced plans to open an outer-space hotel by 2016. Thank to pioneers like Gargarin, wanderlust will never be the same