April 12 marks 50 years since cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to enter space. Pictures from AP
Fifty years ago this Tuesday, an air force pilot named Yuri Gagarin became the first human being in space - taking the Soviet Union's own giant leap for mankind and spurring a humiliated America to race for the moon.
The flight was limited to a single orbit due to concerns over how a human would cope with space travel, but despite the risks, competition for the mission was strong among the 20 young pilots on the short list.
Just three days before blastoff from what would later be known as the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Gagarin was told that he was chosen for the mission.
In a letter to his wife, Valentina, he asked her to raise their daughters "not as little princesses, but as real people," and to feel free to remarry if his mission proved fatal.
Gagarin's rocket lifted off as scheduled on 12 April 1961, at 9:07am Moscow time (6:07 GMT).
The flight was fraught with drama. At one point the control room lost data transmission and problems involving the antennae put the shuttle into a much higher and riskier orbit than planned.
On re-entry, a glitch caused the ship to rotate swiftly and the landing capsule was slow to detatch from the service module.
But Gagarin bailed out as planned, and parachuted onto a field near the Volga River about 450 miles southeast of Moscow
The 27-year-old cosmonaut's mission lasted just 108 minutes in total and made him a national hero.
On 14 April Gagarin was flown to Moscow, where he was greeted by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and driven into town on a highway lined with cheering Russians.
It was not until John Glenn's flight on 20 February 1962, that an American managed to emulate Gagarin's earth-obiting feat.
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