14 DAY TRIAL // Google has started displaying a special logo celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight. On April 12, 1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin flew the Vostok 1 space craft into orbit becoming the first human to reach outer space.
He became an international celebrity and that first flight ushered in an era of space travel and exploration which is soon going to become available to regular people through commercial space flight projects like Virgin Galactic.
The doodle marking the occasion has started showing up on localized versions of the Google search engine in the parts of the world where it is already April 12, remote islands in the Pacific and New Zealand.
As the clock strikes 12 in other parts of the world, the commemorative logo should become available there as well and then, finally, on the global Google.com website which follows the US time zones.
The doodle sports a retro look and is inspired by Soviet posters of the era. It features Gagarin, the first man in space, in full space suit.
It also features a short animation, activated when hovering over the Google logo, showing the Vostok-K rocket, which carried the Vostok spacecraft, launching into space. As usual, the logo still displays the Google name, written in a special font.
The first manned flight into space is one of the big events of the 20th century and marked a pivotal point in the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States, which started with the first artificial satellite in space, the Sputnik 1 satellite, launched four years prior to the first manned flight.
The Space Race culminated with the first Moon landing, in 1969, just 8 years after the first man reached space. The Americans got to the moon first, of course, while the Russians later focused on the Soyuz program.