Yuri Gagarin: One Orbit Around Earth

A look inside

The opening of Yuri Gagarin: One Orbit Around Earth, free to read.

1. 

   Could a person travel all the way around Earth in space? In the Soviet Union, a country that included Yuri Gagarin’s village, many people worked to find out. Engineers built a spacecraft. Pilots practiced. One of those pilots was Yuri.

2. 

   Years earlier, Yuri had been a boy in a farming village. He lived with his parents, brothers, and sister. The children helped with jobs at home and in the garden. Yuri’s world then was fields, family, and school.

3. 

   When Yuri was seven, war reached his village. Soldiers took over, and his school closed. The family was made to leave its house. They lived in a small home dug into the ground, called a dugout. His father built a stove and beds inside.