Vostok 6
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Mission statistics | |
|---|---|
| Mission name: | Vostok 6
<tr><th>Call sign:</th><td>Чайка (Chayka - "Seagull")</td></tr><tr><th>Number of crew members:</th><td>1</td></tr> |
| Launch: | June 16, 1963 09:29:52 UTC Baikonur LC1 |
| Landing: | June 19, 1963 08:20 UTC |
| Duration: | 2 days, 22 hours, 50 minutes |
| Previous mission | Next mission |
|---|---|
| Vostok 5 | Voskhod 1 |
A joint flight with Vostok 5, Vostok 6 carried the first woman into space, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. (See also: List of firsts) This was to some degree a publicity exercise on the part of Soviet government. The chief designer for the Vostok program was Sergei Korolev, 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 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.
According to reports and rumors over the years, Tereshkova was reported to have experienced several physical problems during her flight, including space sickness and significant menstruation. Some reports also claim that at one point in the flight she had become hysterical and began crying uncontrollably until verbally scolded back to rationality by Sergei Korolev over the radio link. However, despite her problems, records and evidence both from before and after the fall of the Soviet Union contend that she completed the flight program as specified. The landing site was the Pavinskiy Collective Farm west of Bayevo in the Altai Region.
The re-entry capsule is now on display at the RKK Energia Museum in Kaluga.
This was the final Vostok flight.
[edit] Crew
Backup
| Vostok programme | Image:Vostok spacecraft.jpg |
|---|---|
| Sputnik 4 | Sputnik 5 | Sputnik 6 | Sputnik 9 | Sputnik 10 | Vostok 1 | Vostok 2 | Vostok 3 | Vostok 4 | Vostok 5 | Vostok 6 |
de:Wostok 6 es:Vostok 6 fr:Vostok 6 it:Vostok 6 hu:Vosztok–6 ka:ვოსტოკ-6 nl:Vostok 6 no:Vostok 6 pl:Wostok 6 pt:Vostok VI ru:Восток-6 sl:Vostok 6 fi:Vostok 6 sv:Vostok 6
