Google celebrated the 50 years of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s (and mankind’s first) space flight today with a cool animated Google Doodle of Yuri Gagarin with the Vostok 1 blasting off to space.

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to journey into space and orbit Earth. Gagarin returned home a hero and later became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre outside Moscow, which was later named after him.

Here’s a video of Vostok 1′s launch:

After his space flight, Gagarin served a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and spent 7 years working on designs for a reusable spacecraft. Soviet officials tried to keep Gagarin from flying again, being worried of losing their hero in an accident.

Gagarin died during a routine training flight on 27 March 1968 while flying a MiG-15 near the town of Kirzhach.