Yuri Gagarin

Hundreds of years from now, when historians chronicle the greatest achievements of humankind, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin’s name will still loom large. For on 12 April 1961, he became the first human in space, and the first to orbit our blue planet, spending 108 minutes beyond our atmosphere before bumpily returning to Earth. It may not have been a ‘giant leap’ in terms of distance, reaching a maximum altitude of 177 miles, but it set alight the blue touch paper on the human exploration of space, which one day may see us build colonies on the Moon, Mars and beyond.

Gagarin had not always wanted to go into space. Flying aircraft was his true love, inspired after watching dogfights in the sky as a child during