NEW YORK, N.Y.- Nearly 50 years ago, on 12 April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin rocketed out of the Earth’s atmosphere aboard the small, spherical Vostok 3KA-3 Space Capsule, becoming the first man to travel into outer space. Three weeks prior, the Soviet space program launched the final test flight of the Vostok spacecraft in preparation for this momentous event. The Vostok 3KA-2 carried a life-size cosmonaut mannequin, Ivan Ivanovich, and a dog, Zvezdochka, into low Earth orbit, and reentered on its first pass over the Russia 115 minutes later. Sotheby’s will offer the Vostok 3KA-2 Space Capsule, which paved the way for Gagarin’s historic mission, in a dedicated auction in New York on 12 April 2011, the 50th anniversary of man’s first flight into outer space (est. $2/10 million*). The space capsule will be on public exhibition in Sotheby’s York