Vostok 1 remained in space for 108 minutes during Yuri Gagarin’s first human spaceflight.
The Soviet spacecraft launched on 12 April 1961 from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth before returning by parachute after ejecting from the descent module. His call sign was Kedr, meaning “Cedar,” and the mission made him the first human to travel into space.
The flight lasted 1 hour, 48 minutes from launch to landing. Vostok 1 was largely automated because engineers were uncertain how a person would react to weightlessness, although Gagarin received an access code that allowed him to take manual control if needed.
The 108-minute figure describes the entire flight, not the time spent above the atmosphere. Gagarin’s landing also involved a separate parachute descent after ejection, a detail sometimes omitted from simplified accounts of the mission.