The Vostok programme (Russian: Восто́к, IPA: [vɐˈstok], Orient or East) was a Soviet human spaceflight project that succeeded in putting a person into Earth's orbit for the first time. The programme developed the Vostok spacecraft from the Zenit spy satellite project and adapted the Vostok rocket from an existing ICBM design. "Vostok" was a classified word before the first release of the program's name to the press.
There were six manned spacefli...
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The Vostok programme (Russian: Восто́к, IPA: [vɐˈstok], Orient or East) was a Soviet human spaceflight project that succeeded in putting a person into Earth's orbit for the first time. The programme developed the Vostok spacecraft from the Zenit spy satellite project and adapted the Vostok rocket from an existing ICBM design. "Vostok" was a classified word before the first release of the program's name to the press.
There were six manned spaceflights in the Vostok programme, all of which took place between 1961 and 1963. The programme preceded the Voskhod programme, which used modified Vostok capsules. By the late 1960s, those programmes were superseded by the Soyuz programme, which continues as of 2011.
The world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, had been put into orbit by the Soviets in 1957. The next milestone in the history of space exploration would be to put a human in space, and both the Soviets and the Americans wanted to be the first.
By January 1959, the Soviets had...
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