April 12

What happened on April 12 in aviation and space history.

• April 12, 1961

  Vostok 1: first human spaceflight (Gagarin)

  Space milestone — On 12 April 1961 the Vostok 3KA capsule lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome with Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin aboard. It was the first flight of the Vostok programme and the first human orbital spaceflight in history: Gagarin became the first person to reach orbital velocity and complete a full orbit of the Earth.

• April 12, 1981

  STS-1: first orbital flight of the Space Shuttle

  Space launch — On 12 April 1981 the orbiter Columbia lifted off on STS-1, the first orbital spaceflight of NASA's Space Shuttle programme. It returned on 14 April 1981 after 54.5 hours and 37 orbits of the Earth, with a crew of two: commander John W. Young and pilot Robert L. Crippen. It was the first American crewed flight since the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975 and the maiden flight of an entirely new crewed spacecraft.