50 Years: Redux

 Earlier I had posted about the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's first flight, known as Yuri's Night. Well, I also learned that a movie has been made, just premiered in fact, called First Orbit. It is a real time recreation of Yuri's 108 minute flight, using the original mission audio from Yuri's flight and shot from the ISS by ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli with a musical score by composer Philip Sheppard.

The audio is subtitled in English and runs about 140 minutes. It is completely free and on Youtube (embedded below) and on their website: firstorbit.org. I just started watching it and I have to say, the high definition video really gives justice to this historic anniversary. I hope you take the time to enjoy!

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Posted in Space News,Spaceflight,Yuri Gagarin 18 comments

50 Years of Human Spaceflight!

Tomorrow night is Yuri's Night, a celebration of the first human spaceflight, made on April 12, 1961 by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. His flight took one orbit that lasted 108 minutes in his Vostok 1 spacecraft.

He was the first person to leave the bonds of the Earth's gravity and the first to see the planet as a globe without borders. The celebration of this event has slowly been growing over the years, and hopefully you will join in too. You can find out more and event locations spanning the globe at yurisnight.net, and more on Yuri Gagarin on Wikipedia.

"Circling the Earth in my orbital spaceship I marveled at the beauty of our planet. People of the world, let us safeguard and enhance this beauty — not destroy it!"
Yuri Gagarin, 1st person in space

[Sorry this one is relatively short, messing around with this template and still trying to get back into things.]

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Posted in Spaceflight,Yuri Gagarin 14 comments