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 ).

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

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

* 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.

* 1963-The USSR launches Vostok 6, Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman ( and first civilian ) to orbit earth.

** Vostok 6

Antarctica has the lowest naturally occurring temperature ever recorded on the ground on Earth: − 89. 2 ° C (− 128. 6 ° F ) at Vostok Station.

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.

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

Vostok 5 would now carry a male cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky flying the joint mission with a woman aboard Vostok 6 in June 1963.

The State Space Commission nominated Tereshkova to pilot Vostok 6 at their meeting on 21 May and this was confirmed by Nikita Khrushchev himself.

After a two-hour countdown, Vostok 6 launched faultlessly, and Tereshkova became the first woman in space.

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

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.

Gherman Titov launched from Gagarin's Start at Baikonur Cosmodrome on 6 August 1961 at 0600 UTC aboard the Vostok 2 spacecraft.

On 3 November 1963, he married Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to fly in space ( see Vostok 6 ).

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.

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.

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.

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

The Vostok 3KA spacecraft was launched on April 12, 1961.

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.

The Soviet programme for doing this was the Vostok programme.

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.

At 07: 55 UT, when Vostok 1 was still 7 km from the ground, the hatch of the spacecraft was released, and two seconds later Gagarin was ejected.

At altitude, the main parachute was deployed from the Vostok spacecraft.

Two schoolgirls witnessed the Vostok landing and described the scene: " It was a huge ball, about two or three metres high.

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 coldest recorded average annual temperature was at Vostok Station, Antarctica.

He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961.

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.

Out of the twenty selected, the eventual choices for the first launch were Gagarin and Gherman Titov due to their performance during training sessions as well as their physical characteristics — space was limited in the small Vostok cockpit, and both men were rather short.

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

* 06: 12 UT Five minutes into the flight and the Vostok rocket core stage has used up its propellant, shuts down and falls away from the Vostok spacecraft and final rocket stage.

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

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

This was the final Vostok flight.