APOD 4.3: Yuri's Planet

Approximately 50 Years Ago..well, 50 years from when this APOD was posted on the NASA site...the Soviet Russian "cosmonaut" Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin was shot into space about the spacecraft Vostok 1. He achieved altitude of 200 miles above sea level, and circled once around the entire planet.

An approximate view of what Yuri would have seen.

His competition, the US astronaut Alan Shepard,  wasn't launched until about a month later. When not pursuing pleasure flying through space, Yuri loved to practice flying Soviet Jets and dying while piloting said jets. In 1968, Yuri's MIG jet crashed in a training flight. Not combat, but in a training flight. They then took what was left of him and stored it in the Kremlin Wall. Because what else do you do with your dead heros?

The image itself was taken in 2003, aboard the International Space Station.