![]() Today, Russia's space program is but a whisper of its former self. Yuri Gagarin, a pilot from the Soviet Union, became the first person to travel into space on April 12, 1961. "They had a whole slew of firsts early on in the space race: the first satellite, first human being in space, first woman in space, the first probe to the moon, the first spacewalk, I mean, you can just go on. "The Soviet space program was quite significant," said Asif Siddiqi, a professor and space historian at Fordham University in New York. ![]() followed Gagarin's flight with two of its own - Alan Shepard would become the first American in a suborbital flight on May 5, 1961, and John Glenn would follow as the first American to orbit Earth the following February - the Soviets would continue to dominate the space race right up until the Americans landed on the moon. Those words were a sharp blow to the United States who, three years earlier, had been beaten by the Soviet Union in its attempt to get a satellite into orbit. ![]() ![]() On April 12, 1961, 27-year-old Gagarin, a Russian pilot, became the first person to escape the bonds of Earth and orbit our planet. With those words, spoken by Yuri Gagarin, a new age for humanity was ushered in: the Space Age. ![]()
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