Have you ever wondered what Earth looks like from space? One person found out before anyone else. On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to orbit the Earth. His spacecraft, Vostok 1, launched from a site in Kazakhstan, a country in Central Asia. The rocket carried him 200 miles above the planet's surface. From that height, Gagarin could see things no human had ever seen before. He saw the curve of the Earth against the blackness of space. He saw the boundary between day and night moving slowly across continents. He described the Earth as having a beautiful blue halo. A thin layer of atmosphere surrounding the planet like a glowing ring. Gagarin's orbit took him across several continents and oceans in just 108 minutes. He flew over Africa, crossed the Pacific Ocean. Passed over South America before re-entering the atmosphere over the Soviet Union. His flight proved that Earth's geography looks very different from space. From the ground, countries seem separate and enormous. From orbit, borders are invisible and the planet looks like one connected system of land, water, and clouds. Gagarin's flight changed how people thought about their planet. Photographs taken from space later showed Earth as a small, fragile ball floating in darkness. These images helped inspire the environmental movement.