Disastrous Vostok 1

Overview
What if the Yuri Gagarin the first man in space dies on reentry?

Timeline
April 12, 1961: The Vostok I spacecraft carrying Yuri Gagarin is destroyed during reentry due to a technical failure, as a result the "failure" announcement from one of three carefully prepared envelopes which were sent to TASS beforehand for this mission is unsealed and aired on Radio Moscow, instead of the "successful" letter in OTL. The USSR declared a national day of mourning the next day.

April 13, 1961: The national day of mourning in CCCP. President Kennedy sent his condolences to the Soviet leadership and to Gagarin's families.

May 5, 1961: NASA astronaut Alan Shepard became the first person to survive a space travel after being launched in the Freedom 7 capsule.

August 1961: Undeterred by the earlier failure, the Russians sent the Vostok 2 spacecraft carrying Gherman Titov into orbit, causing much shock to the Americans. In response to this, President Kennedy sets a goal to land on the Moon on behalf of his nation.

Febuary 20, 1962: NASA astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.

July 22, 1962: Instead of a failure in our OTL, NASA's Mariner 1 is successfully launched to planet Venus.

June 1963: Valentina Tereshkova is the first woman in space.

October 1963: The Mercury-Atlas 10 mission, which is the final flight of the Mercury mission and carrying Alan Shepard, is launched.

March 1965: Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov is the first person to do a spacewalk.

December 1965: NASA performed the first space rendezvous with the Gemini 6A and Gemini 7 spaceships.

March 1966: The Gemini 8 space mission is launched and became the first spacecraft to dock with another. However, an emergency incident occured when the spacecraft went into a tumble, which is reminiscent to the disastrous Vostok 1 mission to many. Fortunately, as in OTL, the astronauts involved return safely to home.

1968: NASA launched the first manned circumlunar mission with an Advanced Gemini spacecraft.

1969: With a Gemini derived spacecraft, NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong is the first man on the Moon. Concurrently the first space station is launched by the U.S. with the Manned Orbiting Laboratory mission. ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, is born after the first ARPANET link was established between the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Stanford Research Institute

1970: A manned orbital telescope which is derived from the Gemini design as well is launched to space.

1971: Space station Salyut 1 is launched by the Soviet Union.

1977: NASA twin Voyager space probes is sent to the outer planets and beyond.

1979: A Islamist revolution toppled the Iranian Shah government and installed a theocratic dictatorship. The Soviets got involved in the Afghan war.

1981: The first space shuttle is launched by NASA, which was named "Columbia".

1983: Korean Air 007 is shot down in the Far East by the Soviet Air Forces, causing the US-USSR tension to be escalated.

1985: Soviet reformist leader Mikhail Gorbachev comes to power.

1988: CCCP tested their first space shuttle "Buran".

1989: NASA spacecraft Galileo is launched to Jupiter. Meanwhile a wave of democratic revolutions erupt in the Eastern Bloc. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.

1991: A coup forced Gorbachev to step down before the USSR could be dismantled. As a result, the hardliners caused the Eastern Bloc revolutions to die down.

1994: USSR's space shuttle "Baikal" is launched to space, together with cosmonauts Igor Volk and Aleksandr Ivanchenko. Meanwhile they sent the spacecraft "Vesta" to the namesake asteroid.

2001: Terrorist attacks occur in both American and Russian soil when a group of terrorists belonged to the Al-Qaeda group hijacked several airplanes and crashed them to places like WTC, Pentagon, the White House, the Kremlin Palace and Ostankino Tower. This caused the Americans and Russians to band together to fight with the scourge.

2009: The OGAS network is completed in the USSR. It serves as an "internet" in there and the rest of the Eastern Bloc.

2011: Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Al-Qaeda group, is mutilated and executed by the Soviet Spetsnaz after the latter raided the former's compound in Pakistan.

2014: The Soviet Navy mistakenly shot down Malaysia Airlines 17 with an anti aircraft missile during a military exercise in the Black Sea. This reignites the tension between the free world and the Eastern Bloc.

2017: As of this year, the USSR is preparing to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution.