4. Gagarin Joint Memorial MuseumGagarin Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He became the first human to journey into outer space when his Vostok spacecraft completed one orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961. Gagarin became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, his nation's highest honour. Vostok 1 was his only spaceflight, but he served as the backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission, which ended in a fatal crash. Gagarin later served as the deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre outside Moscow, which was subsequently named after him. Gagarin died in 1968 when the MiG-15 training jet he was piloting crashed. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale awards the Yuri A. Gagarin Gold Medal in his honor. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.