BAD HARDWARE WEEK

Another event was equally secret, but planned. When Vostok reached an altitude of 7 km, Gagarin ejected and parachuted to the ground. This neatly solved the problem of how to touch down safely. But it created a new problem: the Soviets wanted to claim the altitude record, but the rules said the pilot had to land inside his craft. The truth of how Gagarin met Anna Takhtarova 2 km from Vostok's crater would have been a propaganda disaster. They had to lie.

Anna Takhtarova and her granddaughter, Rita, were weeding potatoes near the village of Smelovka on 12 April 1961 when a man in a strange orange suit and a bulging white helmet approached across the field. The forest warden's wife crossed herself but the girl was intrigued. "I'm a friend, comrades. A friend," shouted the young man, removing his headgear. Takhtarova looked at him curiously. "Can it be that you have come from outer space," she asked. "As a matter of fact, I have," replied Yuri Gagarin.

At 07:55 UTC, when Vostok 1 was still 7 km from the ground, the hatch of the spacecraft was released, and two seconds later Gagarin was ejected. At 2.5 km (8,200 ft) altitude, the main parachute was deployed from the Vostok spacecraft. Two schoolgirls witnessed the Vostok landing and described the scene: "It was a huge ball, about two or three metres high. It fell, then it bounced and then it fell again. There was a huge hole where it hit the first time."

BAD HARDWARE WEEK: This story of Gagarin's return to Earth after orbiting the planet, the most important flight since the Wright brothers' at Kitty Hawk, was widely disseminated, not least because of its symbolism – a Soviet hero being welcomed home by his fellow peasants, a wise mother and a child of the future. It is probably true in essence, though the details changed with each retelling. But some facts were hidden. One was kept secret for more than a decade, except for an extraordinary occasion when Gagarin risked everything to tell the truth to a man he held in the highest regard – a man who was a Cold War enemy: the Royal Navy's top test pilot. More about special case ejections here.
The Martin-Baker MK 14 seat is microprocessor controlled, with thermal batteries for power.