Yuri's Diary by Jayden and Jonathan

Photo by Bluesnap/ Free Use

Vostok 1 was starting to move and I felt nervous, scared and very excited to blast off into unknown. My chair was shaking. I heard over the radio, “ready for blast off!” I shouted back “YES SIR!” I really was proud to be a part of the Soviet Union.

I slowly opened my eyes that had been shut tight the whole way up and looked out of the window in front of me. I saw the clouds, oceans and land that made up earth. It was an incredible sight. I still can’t believe no one else has seen this picture!

The rockets boosters detached from the Vostok 1. Time for landing was getting closer,. It got intense and the rocket was falling down quickly. My job was to survive this mission so I had to pull the lever for the re-entry, also known as the escape lever. As my parachute opened I heard a soviet voice say “Hello are you there?” Our conversation went something like this:

“Hello?”

“Thank goodness!” This was followed by loud cheers as I was the first man to orbit the earth and return safely.

This week we read about Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit the earth. To show our understanding of the story Jonathan and I wrote Yuri Gagarin's diary entry for the 13th April 1961, the day after he survived the first manned mission to space.