ПОЕХАЛИ!
Vostok 1 · 12 April 1961 · 108 minutes
"Poyekhali!" ("Let's go!"), Yuri Gagarin at lift-off
The story of the first human to leave our planet, and the design it inspired.
The story
On the morning of 12 April 1961, a 27-year-old Soviet Air Force pilot named Yuri Gagarin was strapped into the Vostok 1 capsule at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. As the rocket engines ignited, he called out a single word: "Poyekhali!", "Let's go!"
Minutes later he became the first human being to leave the Earth. He completed one orbit of the planet in 108 minutes, watching continents and oceans pass below from a capsule barely two metres wide.
On the way back, as planned, he ejected from the capsule several kilometres above the ground and came down by parachute in a field near the Volga, where a farmer's wife and her granddaughter were the first people to greet the man who had just returned from space.
Overnight, Gagarin became the most famous person on the planet. His flight opened the era of human spaceflight, and every 12 April is now celebrated worldwide as the International Day of Human Space Flight.
Our design carries his first word from space: ПОЕХАЛИ! The word that started it all.
