The Vostok program was a Soviet space program project that ran from 1960 to 1963 and achieved many amazing milestones in spaceflight, including placing the first man in space, the first woman in space, and the first joint flight of two different crewed orbiters. Vostok Remarkable Missions April 12, 1961 Vostok 1 carried Yuri Gagarin and was the first spaceflight of the Vostok programme and the first human spaceflight in history. The orbital spaceflight consisted of a single orbit around Earth. The flight took 108 minutes from launch to landing. Gagarin’s reentry capsule came through the Earth’s atmosphere on a ballistic trajectory. Soviet engineers had not yet perfected a braking system that would slow the craft sufficiently for a human to survive impact. They decided to eject the cosmonaut from his craft. Yuri Gagarin ejected at 20,000 feet and landed safely on Earth. Vostok 2 - Gherman Titov the second human to orbit the Earth He was the first person to orbit the Earth multiple times (a total of 17), the first to pilot a spaceship and to spend more than a day in space. He was also the first to sleep in orbit and to suffer from space sickness (becoming the first person to vomit in space) Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 were double launches. Vostok 3 carried Andriyan Nikolayev and has orbited the Earth 64 times in Vostok 3 over nearly four days in space, August 11–15, 1962 Pavel Popovich was launched on Vostok 4 on August 12, and made 48 Earth orbits. The two capsules were launched on trajectories that brought the spacecraft within approximately 6.5 km (4.0 mi) of each other. The Vostok’s last flight consisted of another double operation. Vostok 5 launched on June 14, 1963 and Vostok 6 on June 16th. The two spacecraft flew three miles of each other and were able to establish radio communication. Vostok 5 Cosmonaut - Valery Bykovsky’s five-day flight remains the longest solo flight in earth’s orbit as of today. Vostok 6 Cosmonaut- Valentina Tereshkova. The first woman into space.
