Nobody had ever left the planet before. On April 12, 1961, a young pilot named Yuri Gagarin climbed into a small capsule on top of a rocket. At 9:07 in the morning, the engines fired. Within minutes, Gagarin was traveling at over seventeen thousand miles per hour. He left Earth's atmosphere and entered outer space. No human had ever done this before. Gagarin's spacecraft was called Vostok 1. It was only about seven feet wide. He could barely move inside. The flight was controlled entirely from the ground. Scientists were not sure if a person could think clearly in space. Gagarin orbited Earth one time. The whole trip took just 108 minutes. When he looked through his window, he saw something no person had ever seen. Earth was a bright blue ball floating in the darkness of space. He later said it was the most beautiful sight he had ever witnessed. The return to Earth was dangerous. Gagarin's capsule reentered the atmosphere at tremendous speed. Parts of it burned away from the heat. At about four miles above the ground, Gagarin ejected from the capsule and parachuted down to a field in Russia. A farmer and her daughter saw him land. They were afraid at first because he was wearing an orange space suit.