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 ).

* Sputnik 5 – first capsule recovered from orbit ( Vostok precursor ) – animals survived

* The Seliger system was tested during the 1960 launches of the Vostok capsule, including Sputnik 5, containing the space dogs Belka and Strelka, whose images are often mistaken for the dog Laika and the 1961 flight of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space on Vostok 1.

In May 1963 Alekseyev proposed to Kamanin that Komarov be named backup for Vostok 5 rather than Khrunov because his suit was ready.

Lake Vostok is an oligotrophic extreme environment, one that is expected to be supersaturated with nitrogen and oxygen, measuring 2. 5 liters of nitrogen and oxygen per of water, that is 50 times higher than those typically found in ordinary freshwater lakes on Earth.

** Vostok 5

Originally it was intended that Tereshkova would launch first in Vostok 5 while Ponomaryova would follow her into orbit in Vostok 6.

After watching the successful launch of Vostok 5 on 14 June, Tereshkova began final preparations for her own flight.

Vostok 6 was the final Vostok flight and was launched two days after Vostok 5 which carried Valery Bykovsky into a similar orbit for five days, landing three hours after Tereshkova.

The Vostok 2 landing site coordinates are, which is 11. 5 km South of Krasny Kut, Saratovskaya oblast in the Russian Federation.

Vostok 5 (, Orient 5 or East 5 ) was a joint mission of the Soviet space program together with Vostok 6 ; as with the previous pair of Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 the two Vostok spacecraft came close to one another in orbit and established a radio link.

" 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.

In 2011, documentary film maker Christopher Riley partnered with European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli to record a new film of what Gagarin would have seen of the Earth from his spaceship, by matching historical audio recordings to video from the International Space Station following the ground path taken by Vostok 1.

Gagarin was further selected for an elite training group known as the Sochi Six, from which the first cosmonauts of the Vostok programme would be chosen.

He asked for 24 more from the garrison, before upping the request to 54 after hearing that the ship the party required at Okhotsk ( the Vostok ) would need significant manpower to repair.

The Vostok was readied and the Fortuna built at a rapid pace, with the first party ( 48 men commanded by Spangberg and comprising those required to start work on the ships that would have to be built in Kamchatka itself as soon as possible ) leaving in June 1727.

These structures form at the high-pressure depths of Lake Vostok and would become unstable if brought to the surface.

The coalition has asserted that " it would be far preferable to join with other countries to penetrate a smaller and more isolated lake before re-examining whether penetration of Lake Vostok is environmentally defensible.

Tereshkova, Solovyova and Ponomaryova were the leading candidates, and a joint mission profile was developed that would see two women launched into space, on solo Vostok flights on consecutive days in March or April 1963.

After the Vostok 6 flight a rumor began circulating that she would marry Andrian Nikolayev ( 1929 – 2004 ), the only bachelor cosmonaut to have flown.

Titov would claim in an interview that he ejected from his capsule as a test of an alternative landing system ; it is now known that all Vostok program landings were performed this way.

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.

Plans for a three-day mission only went forward when the approval of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was obtained ; in the end, Vostok 3 would last nearly four days.

As with Titov on Vostok 2 — but unlike Gagarin on Vostok 1 — Nikolayev would admit to reporters that he ejected and parachuted to earth separately from his spacecraft.

The airlock was necessary because Vostok and Voskhod avionics were cooled with cabin air and would overheat if the capsule was depressurized for the EVA.

The four-day, 66-orbit flight would approach but not break the five-day record set by the Soviet Vostok 5 in June 1963.

During the Vostok program, all the returning cosmonauts would eject as their capsule descended under parachutes at about 7, 000 m ( 23, 000 ft ).

In order to create more space inside the descent module, the cosmonaut's ejection seat was removed, meaning that the Voskhod crews would return to Earth inside their spacecraft, unlike the Vostok cosmonauts who ejected and parachuted down separately.

The Vostok 1 re-entry capsule is now on display at the RKK Energiya museum in Korolyov, near Moscow.

Around 60 % of Space Shuttle astronauts currently experience it on their first flight ; the first case is now suspected to be Gherman Titov, in August 1961 onboard Vostok 2, who reported dizziness and nausea.

The Vostok spacecraft were designed to carry a single cosmonaut.

On 7 July, Spangberg left with a detachment of 209 men and much of the cargo ; on 27 July apprentice shipbuilder Fyodor Kozlov led a small party to reach Okhotsk ahead of Spangberg, both to prepare food supplies and to start work repairing the Vostok and building a new ship ( the Fortuna ) needed to carry the party across the bay from Okhotsk to the Kamchatka peninsula.

By July 1729 the two vessels were back at Okhotsk, where they were moored alongside the Vostok ; the party, no longer needing to carry shipbuilding materials made good time on the return journey from Okhotsk, and by 28 February 1730 Bering was back in the Russian capital.

Vostok 6 (, Orient 6 or East 6 ) was the first human spaceflight mission to carry a woman, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, into space.

The Vostok did carry enough onboard supplies for a 10-day flight.

* 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 ).

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

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

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.

* 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.

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

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

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

Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (; born 6 March 1937 ) is a retired Soviet cosmonaut and the first woman to have flown in space, having been selected from more than four hundred applicants and five finalists to pilot Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963.

Vostok 2 (, Orient 2 or East 2 ) was a Soviet space mission which carried cosmonaut Gherman Titov into orbit for a full day on August 6, 1961 to study the effects of a more prolonged period of weightlessness on the human body.

Nikolayev flew on two space flights: Vostok 3 ( effectively becoming the third Soviet cosmonaut ) and Soyuz 9.

It was launched a day after Vostok 3 with cosmonaut Pavel Popovich on board — the first time that more than one manned spacecraft were in orbit at the same time.

The mission, a joint flight with Vostok 5, was originally conceived as being a joint mission with two Vostoks each carrying a female cosmonaut, but this changed as the Vostok program experienced cutbacks as a precursor to the retooling of the program into the Voskhod program.

As an aviation engineer at Korolyov Design Bureau, he was involved in the development of the Vostok and Voskhod spacecrafts prior to his selection as a cosmonaut.

* April 12 – Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin makes the first human spaceflight, orbiting the Earth once in 108 minutes in Vostok 1.

Over its sixty-year history, this primarily classified military program was responsible for a number of pioneering accomplishments in space flight, including the first intercontinental ballistic missile ( 1957 ), first satellite ( Sputnik-1 ), first animal in space ( the dog Laika on Sputnik 2 ), first human in space and Earth orbit ( cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1 ), first woman in space and Earth orbit ( cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6 ), first spacewalk ( cosmonaut Alexey Leonov on Voskhod 2 ), first Moon impact ( Luna 2 ), first image of the far side of the moon ( Luna 3 ) and unmanned lunar soft landing ( Luna 9 ), first space rover, first space station, and first interplanetary probe.