On 12 April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space. His Vostok 1 spacecraft carried him around Earth once before he returned by parachute. The entire flight, from launch to Gagarin’s landing, lasted 108 minutes.

History remembers the mission as a triumph. Before it began, however, Soviet authorities had prepared official announcements for three possible outcomes: success, trouble during the flight and a mission ending in disaster.

The three prepared announcements

According to an Associated Press account of the mission, Soviet authorities drafted three versions of a bulletin for the state news agency TASS. One announced a successful flight. Another was intended for a mission that encountered problems.

The third covered the possibility that the flight ended in disaster.

Its existence does not tell us exactly how likely Soviet officials believed a fatal accident to be. It does show that they regarded disaster as a credible possibility and had planned what the government would say if it happened.

A spacecraft without a proper launch-escape system

Those preparations were not merely ceremonial. The Soviet rocket programme had experienced a series of failures during 1960, and Vostok 1 had no safety system capable of saving Gagarin from a major rocket explosion during launch or shortly afterwards.

The dangers of rushed Soviet rocket development had been demonstrated only months earlier. The accident, later known as the Nedelin disaster, killed Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin and many other military personnel and engineers. The precise death toll remains disputed, although the Associated Press account gives a figure of 126.

Gagarin wrote his own farewell letter, too

Gagarin understood that he might not return. Two days before launch, he wrote a farewell letter to his wife, Valentina, intended to be given to her if he died.

In the letter, quoted by the he wrote: “I fully trust the equipment, it mustn’t let me down. But if something happens, I ask you Valyusha not to become broken by grief.”

Because Gagarin survived, the letter was not delivered after the mission. Soviet authorities retained it and gave it to Valentina seven years later, after Gagarin was killed in a training-plane crash in March 1968.

The mission encountered problems before it even launched

Vostok 1’s difficulties began while Gagarin was still on the launch pad. A warning light failed to confirm that the capsule’s hatch had closed correctly. Engineers removed 32 screws, repaired a faulty electrical contact and replaced the screws before launch. 

The rocket lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Gagarin responded to the final launch call with the phrase that became inseparable from the mission: “Poyekhali!” — usually translated as “Off we go!”

The final rocket stage shut down at approximately 06:17 UTC, placing Vostok 1 into orbit about ten minutes after launch, according to the European Space Agency’s mission timeline.

Re-entry nearly went seriously wrong

At approximately 07:25 UTC, Vostok 1’s automatic systems oriented the spacecraft and fired its retrorockets for about 42 seconds, beginning the return to Earth.

The descent module was then supposed to separate cleanly from the spacecraft’s equipment module. Instead, the two sections remained connected by a bundle of wires. As they entered the atmosphere, the attached modules began gyrating violently.

The Associated Press  recounts Gagarin seeing flames around the spacecraft and briefly believing that it was burning. The glow was caused by the hot plasma that forms around a spacecraft as it passes through the atmosphere at high speed.

Gagarin did not land inside Vostok 1

Vostok 1 was not designed to carry its cosmonaut safely all the way to the ground inside the capsule. At an altitude of approximately seven kilometres, the hatch was released and Gagarin ejected using his seat.

He descended under his own parachute while the capsule continued towards the ground separately. NASA confirms that Gagarin ejected from Vostok 1 and landed by parachute.

The ESA timeline places his landing at approximately 08:05 UTC, around ten minutes after his ejection.

Only the success bulletin was needed

Gagarin survived the launch, orbital flight, troubled re-entry, ejection and parachute descent. The TASS success announcement became the official account carried around the world.

The other two prepared versions—the announcement for a mission in trouble and the statement for a mission ending in disaster—were never needed. Their existence remains a reminder that the first human orbital flight was not treated internally as a guaranteed triumph.

Soviet authorities had prepared for success, but they had also prepared for the possibility that the man they sent into space would not return.