Gagarin's orbit in Vostok 1. Orbital flightpath (red, on a map of the Earth) of the Vostok 1 spacecraft (upper left, call sign KEDR) that carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968) around the globe as the first human in space. Gagarin's historic flight took place on 12 April 1961 and lasted 1 hour and 48 minutes. The events labelled here include: launch (Baikonur) and landing (near Saratov), orbital injection, radio contacts (Z1, Z2 and Z3), radio communications, and loss of contact. The flight times are in Western European Time. Retrofire and re-entry took place over Africa, and included problems with descent module separation (yellow line).