Yuri Gagarin: First Human in Space__________________________________
Task 1. Read the text and answer the questions (Ответы на вопросы письменно)
On April 12th 1961 at 9.07 Moscow time the first human space flight was made. A Mankind dream came true. Yuri Gagarin was 27 years old.
He made a circle around the Earth aboard the Vostok spacecraft. The flight took 108 minutes. He was the first human ever to see our planet from the outer space at an altitude about 187 miles.
The future first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was born in the village of Klushino near the city of Smolensk on the 9th of March, 1934.
At the age of seven he entered the school. Just one month after that Germans occupied the village. The occupation lasted for almost two years.
During World War II, the Gagarin family suffered like the rest.
The Germans forcibly removed Gagarin’s family from their home and kidnapped his siblings. They didn’t return until after the war was over. The family constructed a small mud hut where they spent a year and nine months until the end of the occupation.
When the war ended the Gagarin family moved to Gzhatsk. Yuri attended an elementary school in this town.
Gagarin briefly attended a trade school to learn foundry work in the Moscow town of Lyubertsy, then entered a technical school.
He joined the Saratov Flying Club in 1955 and learned to fly the Yak-18.
Later that year, he was drafted and sent to the Orenburg Flying School, where he trained in the MIG jet. Gagarin graduated November 7, 1957, four days after Sputnik 2 was launched.
He married Valentina Goryacheva, a nursing student, the day he graduated.
Post-graduation, he was assigned to Luostari airbase in Murmansk Oblast, close to the Norwegian border, where terrible weather made flying risky.
In the summer of 1960 6 men were chosen out of the space group. Still it wasn’t quite clear how to pick the best one. Those six were asked to decide who was more reliable among them. Everyone decided on Gagarin.
Capable, strong, and even-tempered, Gagarin represented the ideal Soviet man, a peasant farmer who became a highly trained cosmonaut in a few short years.
Moreover space was limited in the small Vostok cockpit, and Yuri was rather short. Gagarin was 1.57 meters tall.
Vostok 1 was designed by Soviet engineers guided by Sergei Korolev.
Vostok 1 had no landing module, so Gagarin ejected from the spacecraft with his parachute at about 7 km above ground.
After the flight, Gagarin became a worldwide celebrity, touring widely abroad. He visited Italy, Finland, Germany, Japan, Egypt and Canada to promote the Soviet achievement. He visited the United Kingdom three months after the Vostok 1 mission, going to London and Manchester. When he visited Manchester in the United Kingdom, it was pouring rain. However, Gagarin insisted that the car hood remain back so that the cheering crowds could catch a glimpse of him.
After the success of Vostok 1, Yuri Gagarin became a national hero. He was protected and he was even denied another space mission because the Soviets were afraid of losing their national icon in an accident.
Gagarin became a test pilot for Russian MiG fighter jets The closest Yuri ever came to flying back into space was his assignment as back up pilot on the ill-fated Soyuz 1 mission, in which Yuri's friend met a tragic end when the spacecraft crashed.
Gagarin’s life ended abruptly when he was only 34 years old. On 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight, he and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15 crash near the town of Kirzhach. Gagarin and Seryogin were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square.
The real heroes leave us being young. He never got the second chance to see the earth from the window of the spacecraft. Although flying to other planets was his only dream.
Questions:
1. What was Yuri Gagarin famous for?
2. When was he born?
3. What was Yuri like?
4. What institutions did Gagarin finish?
5. When did the great flight take place?
6. Was the space journey successful?
Task 2. Find in the text 15 verbs in Past Simple form and write their 1st form with the translation.
Образец: came – come – приходить.
10 739
4 506 
