IN the 21st century, reports on space flights and satellite launches have become a common part of the news land-scape, flights to distant planets and the exploration of the Moon are discussed at scientific conferences and meetings, and not in the pages of science fiction novels. However, the era of the conquest of outer space began exactly 60 years ago - on April 12, 1961, when the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin flew around the planet Earth in the «Vostok» orbital spacecraft. His flight lasted 108 minutes, and these minutes changed drastically the view of the possible and impossible.