* 1961 – The Russian ( Soviet ) cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first manned orbital flight, in Vostok 3KA-2 ( Vostok 1 ).

Averaging at least 1. 6 km thick, the ice is so massive that it has depressed the continental bedrock in some areas more than 2. 5 km below sea level ; subglacial lakes of liquid water also occur ( e. g., Lake Vostok ).

Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth aboard Vostok 1 manned spacecraft on 12 April 1961.

Columbia was successfully launched on April 12, 1981, the 20th anniversary of the first human spaceflight ( Vostok 1 ), and returned on April 14, 1981, after orbiting the Earth 36 times, landing on the dry lakebed runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

The Soviet space program achieved many of the first milestones, including the first living being in orbit in 1957, the first human spaceflight ( Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1 ) in 1961, the first spacewalk ( by Aleksei Leonov ) in 1965, the first automatic landing on another celestial body in 1966, and the launch of the first space station ( Salyut 1 ) in 1971.

Vostok 1 (, East 1 or Orient 1 ) was the first spaceflight in the Vostok program and the first human spaceflight in history.

Vostok 1 was launched by the Soviet space program, and was designed by Soviet engineers guided by Sergei Korolev under the supervision of Kerim Kerimov and others.

27-year-old Yuri Gagarin was the only crew member of Vostok 1.

" Kamanin was referring to the second mission, Vostok 2, which would last a full day, compared to the relatively short single-orbit mission of Vostok 1.

Gagarin entered the Vostok 1 spacecraft, and at 7: 10 am local time ( 04: 10 UT ), the radio communication system was turned on.

Once Gagarin was in the Vostok 1 spacecraft, his picture appeared on television screens in the launch control room from an onboard camera.

* 06: 10 UT The payload shroud covering Vostok 1 is released.

* 06: 13 UT The rocket is still firing, pushing Vostok 1 toward orbit.

Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1

I'm continuing the flight ..." Vostok 1 is moving further downrange from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

* 06: 17 UT The Vostok rocket final stage shuts down, ten seconds later the spacecraft separates and Vostok 1 reaches orbit.

* 06: 21 UT Vostok 1 passes over the Kamchatka peninsula and out over the North Pacific Ocean.

" Vostok 1 passes out of VHF range of the Khabarovsk ground station and contact is lost.

Variations in CO < sub > 2 </ sub >, temperature and dust from the Vostok, Antarctica | Vostok ice core over the past 450, 000 years

* 06: 37 UT Vostok 1 continues on its journey as the Sun sets over the North Pacific.

* 06: 57 UT Vostok 1 is over the South Pacific between New Zealand and Chile when Gagarin sends this message, "... I'm continuing the flight, and I'm over America.

* 07: 10 UT Passing over the South Atlantic, the Sun rises and Vostok 1 is in daylight again.

The original drilling technique employed by the Russians involved the use of Freon and kerosene to lubricate the borehole and prevent it from collapsing and freezing over ; 60 tons of these chemicals have been used thus far on the ice above Lake Vostok.

Titov orbited the Earth over 17 times, exceeding the single orbit of Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1 − as well as the suborbital spaceflights of American astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom aboard their respective Mercury-Redstone 3 and 4 missions.

Commemorative pin from Vostok 2 MissionTitov took manual control of the spacecraft's attitude for a time as he passed over Africa on his first orbit and would again at the end of the seventh orbit ; the controls were reported to function well.

Vostok 3 (, Orient 3 or East 3 ) was a spaceflight of the Soviet space program intended to determine the ability of the human body to function in conditions of weightlessness and test the endurance of the Vostok 3KA spacecraft over longer flights.

The launch of Vostok 3 came over a year after the previous Soviet spaceflight, due in part to a rocket that exploded during an attempted satellite launch, damaging the launch pad.

Voskhod development was both a follow-on to the Vostok programme and a recycling of components left over from that programme's cancellation following its first six flights.

The term captured ice shelf has been used for the ice over a subglacial lake, such as Lake Vostok.

* Vostok is the most isolated research base on the continent ( located at ), and it is situated over the southernmost lake in the world, Lake Vostok, a subglacial lake 4, 000 metres ( 13, 000 feet ) under the surface of the ice where the station sits.

This site (, 3233 m above sea level, 560 km from Vostok Station ) was chosen to obtain the longest undisturbed chronicle of environmental change, in order to characterise climate variability over several glacial cycles, and to study potential climate forcings and their relationship to events in other regions.

However, the Soviet Union was fiercely competitive in holding the early lead it had gained in manned spaceflight, so the Soviet Communist Party, led by Nikita Khrushchev, ordered the hasty conversion of its single-pilot Vostok capsule into a two-or three-person craft named Voskhod, in order to compete with Gemini and Apollo.

The first human spaceflight in history was accomplished on a derivative of R-7, Vostok, on 12 April 1961, by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

* 1963 – Soviet Space Program: Vostok 6 Mission – Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.

The next step of this became the competition between the Mercury Project and the Soviet Vostok Program of bringing a pilot into space and in orbit around the Earth.

The Soviet programme for doing this was the Vostok programme.

Although some contemporary Soviet sources stated that Gagarin had parachuted separately to the ground, the Soviet Union officially insisted that he had landed with the Vostok ; the government forced the cosmonaut to lie in press conferences, and the FAI certified the flight.

The Soviet Union did not admit until 1971 that Gagarin had ejected and landed separately from the Vostok descent module.

When Soviet officials filled out the FAI papers to register the flight of Vostok 1, they stated that the launch site was Baykonur at.

* The Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union gave a peaceful outlet to the political and military tensions of the Cold War, leading to the first human spaceflight with the Soviet Union's Vostok 1 mission in 1961, and man's first landing on another world — the Moon — with America's Apollo 11 mission in 1969.

* June 16 – Vostok 6 carries Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman, into space.

** Vostok 1: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space, orbiting the Earth once.

* August 6 – Vostok 2: Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov becomes the second human to orbit the Earth, and the first to be in outer space for more than one day.

* August 7 – Vostok 2 with Titov onboard lands in Soviet Union.

The first manned spacecraft was Vostok 1, which carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, and completed a full Earth orbit.

It was the third Soviet human spaceflight programme after the Vostok and Voskhod programme.

The first human spaceflight was Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, aboard which Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made one orbit around the Earth.