Who was the first person to travel into outer space?

Yuri Gagarin was the first person to travel into outer space.

The Soviet cosmonaut launched aboard Vostok 1 on 12 April 1961. His single orbit around Earth lasted 108 minutes and made him the first human to complete a spaceflight.

Gagarin’s mission reached an altitude of about 327 kilometres. Because Vostok 1 could not land with him inside the capsule, he ejected during descent and parachuted separately, a detail often omitted from simplified accounts.

The flight made Gagarin an international symbol of the Space Age. Alan Shepard became the first American in space less than a month later, but his first mission was a suborbital flight rather than an orbit around Earth.