Vostok 6
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Vostok 6 () was the first
human spaceflight Human spaceflight (also referred to as manned spaceflight or crewed spaceflight) is spaceflight with a crew or passengers aboard a spacecraft, often with the spacecraft being operated directly by the onboard human crew. Spacecraft can also be ...
to carry a woman,
cosmonaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...
Valentina Tereshkova Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (born 6 March 1937) is a Russian engineer, member of the State Duma, and former Soviet cosmonaut. She was the first Women in space, woman in space, having flown a solo mission on Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. S ...
, into space.


Mission

The spacecraft was launched on 16 June 1963. It set the record for highest orbital inclination of a crewed spacecraft at 65°, a record not broken until the 90°
polar orbit A polar orbit is one in which a satellite passes above or nearly above both poles of the body being orbited (usually a planet such as the Earth, but possibly another body such as the Moon or Sun) on each revolution. It has an inclination of abo ...
of
Fram2 Fram2 was a private human spaceflight mission operated by SpaceX with a Crew Dragon spacecraft on behalf of entrepreneur Chun Wang. During the mission, Wang and his all-civilian crew— Jannicke Mikkelsen, Rabea Rogge and Eric Philips—wer ...
nearly 62 years later. While
Vostok 5 Vostok 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. Vostok 5 launched ...
had been delayed by technical problems, Vostok 6's launch proceeded with no difficulties. Data collected during the mission provided better understanding of the female body's reaction to spaceflight. Like other cosmonauts on Vostok missions, Tereshkova 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 Vostok 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. Vostok 5 launched ...
, 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 The Voskhod programme (, , ''Ascent'' or ''Dawn'') was the second Soviet human spaceflight project. Two one-day crewed missions were flown using the Voskhod spacecraft and rocket, one in 1964 and one in 1965, and two dogs flew on a 22-day mission ...
. Vostok 6 was the last flight of a
Vostok 3KA Vostok (, translated as "East") was a class of single-pilot crewed spacecraft built by the Soviet Union. The first human spaceflight was accomplished with Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The Vostok programme made ...
spacecraft and the final flight of the
Vostok programme The Vostok programme ( ; rus, Восток, p=vɐˈstok, a=ru-восток.ogg, t=East) was a Soviet human spaceflight project to put the first Soviet cosmonauts into low Earth orbit and return them safely. Competing with the United States P ...
. The Vostok 6 landing site coordinates are , west of
Barnaul Barnaul (, ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative centre of Altai Krai, Russia, located at the confluence of the Barnaulka and Ob (river), Ob rivers in the West Siberian Plain. As of the Russian Censu ...
, Altai, Russia and south of Baevo, and northeast of
Karagandy Karaganda (, ; ), also known as Karagandy (, ; ; ) (also sometimes romanized as Qaraghandy), is a major city in central Kazakhstan and the capital of the Karaganda Region. It is the fifth most populous city in the country, with a population o ...
,
Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...
. At the site, in a small park at the roadside is a statue of Tereshkova, with arms outstretched, at the top of a curved column. The capsule is now on display at the RKK Energia Museum in Korolyov (near
Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
). From September 2015 it formed part of the content of the "Cosmonauts" exhibition at the
Science Museum, London The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019. Like other publicly funded ...
. The Exhibition featured many iconic objects from the Soviet space program.


During flight

The Soviet state television network broadcast live video of Tereshkova from a camera inside the capsule, and she conversed with Premier
Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...
over the radio. Communications with ground controllers about her overall health were described in post-flight reports as "evasive", and later official accounts of the mission had somewhat condescending remarks about Tereshkova's overall in-flight performance. In Tereshkova's account of the mission in her postflight debriefing, she mentioned having assorted body pains and difficulty with her helmet headset (also reported by Bykovsky on Vostok 5). She vomited while attempting to eat, although she attributed this to the taste of the food rather than her physical condition. Another problem was that while the Soviet space agency had provided her with food, water and tooth paste, they had forgotten to pack a toothbrush. An official history of the Soviet space program published in 1973 described Tereshkova's physical condition and in-flight performance as (, 'fair' or 'adequate') rather than (, 'good' or 'outstanding').


During landing

Like all the previous
Vostok Vostok () refers to east in Russian but may also refer to: Spaceflight * Vostok programme, Soviet human spaceflight project * Vostok (spacecraft), a type of spacecraft built by the Soviet Union * Vostok (rocket family), family of rockets derived ...
flights, Tereshkova had to eject. She landed safely by parachute. 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 spacecraft designer
Sergey Korolev Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (14 January 1966) was the lead Soviet Aerospace engineering, rocket engineer and spacecraft designer during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. He invented the R-7 Sem ...
. Flight controllers then provided Tereshkova with data to enter into the descent program. By request of Korolev, Tereshkova kept the problem secret. "I kept silent, but Evgeny Vasilievich decided to make it public. So, I can easily talk about it now."


Pilot


Backup


Reserve


Mission parameters

*
Mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...
: *
Apogee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. The line of apsides (also called apse line, or major axis of the orbit) is the line connecting the two extreme values. Apsides perta ...
: *
Perigee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. The line of apsides (also called apse line, or major axis of the orbit) is the line connecting the two extreme values. Apsides perta ...
: *
Inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Eart ...
: 64.9° *
Period Period may refer to: Common uses * Period (punctuation) * Era, a length or span of time *Menstruation, commonly referred to as a "period" Arts, entertainment, and media * Period (music), a concept in musical composition * Periodic sentence (o ...
: 88.3 minutes As referenced by


References

{{Orbital launches in 1963 Spacecraft launched in 1963 1963 in the Soviet Union Valentina Tereshkova Human spaceflights Vostok program Spacecraft which reentered in 1963 June 1963