First Orbit: Movie about Yuri Gargarin’s historic flight
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50th anniversary of Yuri Gargarin’s
108 minute flight
April 12, 2011 it will be 50 years to the day since Yuri Gagarin climbed into his space ship and was launched into space. It took him just 108 minutes to orbit Earth and he returned as the World’s very first space man.
No film exists showing what Gagarin saw through the viewports of his Vostok capsule; there is only an audio recording of his observations.
Now 50 years on a movie First Orbit, has been made on the space station that tries to show what Yuri Gagarin might have seen on his historic 1 hour and 48 minute flight around the Earth in 1961.
The audio of Gargarin’s observations has been matched to high-definition video shot from the International Space Station (ISS).
“When you combine these pictures of what he was genuinely able to see with the excitement and tingle in his voice, it’s quite amazing,” film director and space historian Dr Chris Riley told BBC News.
Yuri Gagarin became the first human to venture above the Earth’s atmosphere when he blasted away from the Tyuratam missile range (now the Baikonur Cosmodrome) in Kazakhstan at 0607 GMT on 12 April 1961. His journey around the globe took him across the Soviet republics, across the Pacific Ocean, over the Straits of Magellan in South America, above the Atlantic and Africa before re-entry and a bailout back to the ground near the city of Engels in south-west Russia.
Free download of Yuri Gargarin movie: First Orbit
Although it is not possible to recreate exactly what Gargarin saw, the view down to Earth filmed on the ISS was stitched together with Gagarin’s capsule recording and a music soundtrack from the composer Philip Sheppard. Interwoven also are news reports from Radio Moscow, Tass and the BBC.
The movie will be premiered on YouTube on this year’s 50th anniversary and then will be available for free download.
“Right from the very beginning, our thought was to make it and then give it away,” said Dr Riley.
“Once it became clear we were making this film for all mankind to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight, everyone just threw their weight behind it without any payment.”
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I love stories about space, this movie will be a must watch for me.
He was a brave, brave man as were all the early space travelers. They truly went where no man had gone before and did it with a level of technical excellence that has never been equaled before or after.
I agree Sagacious, I remember those early days of the Russian Bear kicking everybody’s ass in the space-race. I was ten years-old when Sputnik went up not much older when Gargarin took flight. I remember being very excited and had enough savvy to realize what was happening was history. A funny thing when Armstrong walked on the moon, I stayed up all night (I was on GMT) but it wasn’t as thrilling, for me, as Gargarin’s 1 hour and 48 minute trip.