Looking back on six decades of humankind in space

This year will mark 60 years since the first human flew to space, after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's pioneering space flight in April 1961

Soviet cosmonaut and the first man to travel in space, Yury Alekseyvich Gagarin (1934 - 1968) Source: Getty

This year marks the point where human beings have been venturing into space, the so-called final frontier, for six decades.  And this year marks some significant anniversaries - some triumphant and some tragic.  Sixty years ago, on April the 12th, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly to space. In orbit for 100 minutes, newsreels of the day reported on how Gagarin described sights never before seen by man:  "The Earth looked a delicate blue, floating in a black sky"