Voskhod 1
Voskhod 1 — the first spacecraft to carry a multi-person crew (October 1964): three cosmonauts, flown without spacesuits in a converted Vostok.
Key facts
Mission & specifications
Mission
- Operator
- OKB-1 (USSR)
- Launched
- October 12, 1964
- Status
- Completed
Trajectory
- Distance from the Sun
- 1.01 AU
- Distance from Earth
- 398,626 km
- Distance from Venus
- 0.646 AU
Mission
Voskhod 1 was a spacecraft built to win a headline. In October 1964, as the United States prepared its two-seat Gemini, the Soviet Union wanted to fly more than one cosmonaut first — so engineers stripped a single-seat Vostok capsule of its ejection seat and crammed in three couches. The result, flown on 12 October 1964, carried the first multi-person crew into space: commander Vladimir Komarov, the engineer Konstantin Feoktistov and the physician Boris Yegorov. To fit three men into a cabin built for one, they flew without spacesuits — there was simply no room — accepting a risk that would have been unthinkable later. The flight lasted just over a day and was, in truth, more a political demonstration than a scientific advance, but it scored another Soviet first and put a doctor and an engineer, not just a pilot, into orbit. It was a vivid example of how the space race pushed both sides to take risks for the sake of being first.
- 1964The first crew of threeLaunch
Komarov, Feoktistov and Yegorov fly a converted Vostok without spacesuits.
- 1964LandingMission end
The first multi-person spaceflight ends after just over a day.
Images
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