In early 1961, after an intense training process, he was selected to join the group of pilots that would be future cosmonauts. On April, 1961, he began his trip to space that took him between 180 to 327 kilometers above the Earth's surface.

On that day, an hour after take off from the Baikonur Space center (currently Kazakhstan), the official Soviet news agency TASS had announced that Moscow had send their first man into space.

It was the second spacecraft sent into space by the Soviet Union, the first being the launching of the Sputnik satellite on October of 1957.

In his memoirs, Gagarin recalled that after flying over the Atlantic, he thought of his mother and how she would react with the news. In fact, like the rest of the world, she did not know about the project, it was kept a secret until the launching.

During the flight, while the spacecraft was orbiting Earth, he said: "people of Earth, save this beauty, let us not destroy it". He had already become a hero and the Soviet Union was leading the space race at the time.

Yuri Gagarin arrived to Cuba on July 24th, 1961, only three months after his historic trip. They say there was an intense rain but it was not an obstacle for a multitude that welcomed the Soviet cosmonaut and accompanying delegation.

Yuri's visit coincided with the festivities of the anniversary on the attacks against the Carlos Manuel de Cespedes and Moncada Garrisons on July 26th. At the massive activity at Havana's Revolution Plaza, the then President Osvaldo Dorticos gave Yuri the Playa Giron Order.

That day, after the exchange of caps with then Prime Minister Fidel Castro, the visitor expressed: "a day will come when this nation will send its own cosmonaut into space". His words became a reality years later with the young Cuban Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez travelling into space. Tamayo was the first Latin American cosmonaut and later was given the Hero of the Republic of Cuba Medal.

Gagarin passed away on March 27th, 1968 when flying alongside an instructor in a MIG-15 which crashed in the outskirts of Moscow. In that same area a monument was lifted in his memory and the remains of the cosmonaut rests in peace in the Kremlin wall.

Yuri Gagarin was the first human being to "touch the stars". At the time of his journey there was a difference between astronomers and astronauts:

the first will continue studying space without ever visiting it and the second, have the keys to space.