Uncommon · History
Vostok 6
Soviet space mission of 1963, the first human spaceflight to carry a woman (Valentina Tereshkova) into space
Vostok 6 (Russian: Восток-6, lit. 'Orient 6' or 'East 6') was the first human spaceflight to carry a woman, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, into space.
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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 of Fram2 nearly 62 years later. While Vostok 5 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, 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 and the final flight of the Vostok programme. 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, 200 km (120 mi) west of Barnaul, Altai, Russia and 7 km (4.3 mi) south of Baevo, and 650 km (400 mi) northeast of Karagandy, Kazakhstan.
Text: Wikipédia, CC BY-SA 4.0. · Image: Alexander Mokletsov / Александр Моклецов (CC BY-SA 3.0) ·