Vostok 1 orbiting the Earth. Artwork of the Vostok 1 spacecraft carrying Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968) around the Earth as the first human in space on 12 April 1961. The Moon is in the background, and the spacecraft is passing over sunlit mountains. Gagarin launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and circled the Earth once in a flight that lasted 1 hour and 48 minutes. He landed by parachute in the Saratov region of Russia. The Vostok 1 spacecraft, large enough for a crew of one, consisted of an equipment module (cone-shaped) and a descent module (spherical). Various antennae are also seen.