 On April 12, 1961, the USSR opened the era of crewed spaceflight, with the flight of the first "cosmonaut" (Russian name for space travelers), Yuri Gagarin.Gagarin's flight, part of the Soviet Vostok space exploration program, took 108 minutes and consisted of a single orbit of the Earth.On August 7, 1961, Gherman Titov, another Soviet cosmonaut, became the second man in orbit during his Vostok 2 mission.