Spacewatch: 60 years after Gagarin, first ‘all-civilian’ mission is in works

Billionaire Jared Isaacman is chartering a SpaceX rocket to take him and three others into orbit

This week was the 60th anniversary of the first human spaceflight. On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The flight lasted 108 minutes and reached a maximum altitude of 327km (203 miles).

Following the re-entry of his space capsule, Gagarin parachuted the last 7km to Earth, landing in a potato field near Saratov. A woman and her granddaughter were planting the crop, and were startled to see him in his bright orange flight suit coming towards them.