The earliest manned spaceflight was by Cosmonaut Flight Major (later Col.) Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (1934-68) in Vostok 1 on 12 Apr 1961. The take-off was from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan at 6:07a.m. GMT and the landing near Smelovka, near Engels, in the Saratov region of Russia, 115 minutes later. Col. Gagarin landed separately from his spacecraft 118 minutes after the launch, by parachute after ejecting 108 minutes into the flight as planned. The maximum altitude during the 40,868.6 km (25,394,8 mile) flight of Vostok 1 was listed at 327 km (203 miles), with a maximum speed of 28,260 km/h (17,560 mph). Col. Gagarin, invested a Hero of the Soviet Union and awarded the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star Medal, was killed in a jet plane crash near Moscow on 27 March 1968.