Yuri Gagarin Flight Ended in Panic

          NEW YORK --The Soviet Union surged ahead in the space race
          when it launched Lt. Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961. Now
          experts have learned that Gagarin's flight nearly ended in
          disaster, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
          Sotheby's will auction off notes written by Gagarin's
          commander that tell how the spaceship, the Vostok I, spun
          dangerously out of control near the end of its orbit around
          the Earth.
          "Malfunction!" the commander, Col. Yevgeny Karpov,
          wrote in a frantic scrawl. "Sudden impact!" he continued,
          adding that the spaceship was spinning wildly. "Don't
          Panic!" "Emergency Situation."
          After 10 minutes of high drama, the Times said, the
          spacecraft separated from the braking rocket that was
          causing it to lurch and, still wobbling, began its descent
          back into the atmosphere.
          The Times said Western space experts have authenticated the
          episode from other Russian sources, including a report by
          Gagarin himself, and have concluded that he had a
          close brush with death.
          "In a number of ways it could have killed him," said James
          Oberg, an expert on the Russian space program and a
          consultant to Sotheby's.
          Experts said that if the dangerous nature of Gagarin's
          flight had been known at the time, it might have changed the
          course of history.
          "There's no question that Kennedy would have been much
          slower in making a commitment to send Americans to the
          moon," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy
          Institute at George Washington University.
          Logsdon said the revelation would likely have forced the
          White House to heed advisers who were leery of sending
          humans into orbit.
          Ohio Sen. John Glenn, who became the first American in orbit
          in 1962, agreed. "If something like that had been known, it
          might have played into the hands of the doubters," he said.
          Sotheby's auction of space paraphernalia, including Karpov's
          notes, is scheduled for March 16 in New York.