Vostok 6 (Russian: Восток-6, Orient 6 or East 6) was the first human spaceflight mission to carry a woman, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, into space. This also made her the first civilian in space.[3] The spacecraft was launched on June 16, 1963. Data was collected on the female body´s reaction to spaceflight. Like other cosmonauts on Vostok missions, she maintained a flight log, took photographs, and manually oriented the spacecraft. Her photographs of the horizon from space were later used to identify aerosol layers within the atmosphere. 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. Vostok 6 was the last flight of a Vostok 3KA spacecraft.
It was revealed in 2004 that an error in the control program made the spaceship ascend from orbit instead of descending. Tereshkova noticed the fault on the first day of the flight and reported it to Sergey Korolev. The mistake was promptly repaired. Tereshkova entered the data that she got from the Earth into the descent program and landed safely.[citation needed]
By request of Soviet spaceship designer Sergey Korolev, Tereshkova kept the problem secret for dozens of years. “I kept silent, but Evgeny Vasilievich decided to make it public. So, I can easily talk about it now.”[citation needed]
The intended landing site was the Pavinskiy Collective Farm west of Bayevo in the Altai Region. After parachuting from the capsule, Tereshkova barely missed a lake because of violent wind. After landing, the wind took her parachute, and Tereshkova received a large bruise on her nose before she managed to free herself from it.[citation needed]
The Vostok 6 landing site coordinates are 53°12′34″N 80°48′14″E / 53.209375°N 80.80395°E / 53.209375; 80.80395, which is 200 km West of Barnaul, Region of Altai in the Russian Federation and 7 km south of Baevo, and 650 km North East of Karagandy, Kazakhstan. At the site, in a small park at the roadside, is a gleaming silver statue of Tereshkova soaring upward, with arms outstretched, at the top of a curved column. The statue is wearing a spacesuit without a helmet.[4]
The capsule is now on display at the RKK Energia Museum in Korolyov (near Moscow).
This was the final Vostok flight.
-Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (Russian: Валенти́на Влади́мировна Терешко́ва; born March 6, 1937) is a retired Soviet cosmonaut, and was the first woman in space. She was selected out of more than four hundred applicants, and then out of five finalists, to pilot Vostok 6 on the 16 June, 1963, becoming both the first woman and the first civilian to fly in space,[1] as she was only honorarily inducted into the USSR´s Air Force as a condition on joining the Cosmonaut Corps. During her three-day mission, she performed various tests on herself to collect data on the female body´s reaction to spaceflight.
Before being recruited as a cosmonaut, Tereshkova was a textile-factory assembly worker and an amateur parachutist. After the dissolution of the first group of female cosmonauts in 1969, she became a prominent member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, holding various political offices. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, she stayed in politics and remains revered as a hero in post-Soviet Russia.
-Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky (Russian: Валерий Фёдорович Быковский; born 2 August 1934, Pavlovsky Posad) was a Soviet cosmonaut who flew three manned space mission space flights: Vostok 5, Soyuz 22, and Soyuz 31. He was also backup for Vostok 3 and Soyuz 37.
Bykovsky set a space endurance record when he spent five days in orbit aboard Vostok 5 in 1963. Although this flight duration has long since been surpassed by crews of more than one person, to this day it remains the endurance record for a solo spaceflight.
Bykovsky was to have commanded the original Soyuz 2 mission, which was cancelled due to problems with Soyuz 1. After the parachutes failed on that mission, killing Vladimir Komarov, the same problem was found with the Soyuz 2 capsule, which meant if the mission had flown, Bykovsky and his crew would also have been killed.
Many of his later years in the space programme were involved with promoting the Intercosmos programme amongst the world´s Socialist nations. He retired in 1988 and then spent three years as the Director of the House of Soviet Science and Culture in Berlin.
Valery Bykovsky was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union (1963), the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Star, and numerous other medals and foreign orders.
Bykovsky was also a keen sportsman:
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