What was the Vostok Program?
The Vostok program represented the Soviet ambition to put the first man in space. Vostok ran between 1958 and 1963, for five years after the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik. The first craft of the Vostok program, Vostok 1, launched Yuri Gagarin into space on 12 April 1961, a step forward for humanity acknowledged internationally during “Yuri’s night” celebrations on April 12th. There were six Vostok flights in all, each of which achieved a number of space “firsts” to the USSR, including: • first human spaceflight (Vostok 1, 12 April 1961) • first full day in space (Vostok 2, 6 August, 1961) • first dual flight (Vostok 3 and 4, 11 August, 1962) • longest solo spaceflight of 20th century (Vostok 5, 14 June 1963) • first female astronaut in space (Vostok 6, 16 June 1963) The Vostok spacecraft, the first-ever spacecraft for humans, was developed based on technology created for the Zenit spy satellite. The dual-use function of the technology was necessary to originally get Communist
