vostok_mission

VOSTOK MISSION REPORT
LAUNCH DATA

Launch	12 April 1961. 09:07 Moscow Time (MT)
Launch Site	Launch Site 2, Pad 1, Baikonur, Tyuratam, Kazakhstan (USSR)
Launch Vehicle	R-7 (8K72K) serial number E103-16
Spacecraft	3KA (production index 11F63) serial number 3
Spacecraft Mass	Approx. 4,725 kg (10,416 lbs.)

MISSION OBJECTIVE
The first crewed orbital space flight, of one orbit duration. The primary objective was to prove that a human test subject could survive a rocket-boosted launch, orbital flight, re-entry and landing, while also being able to perform some basic functions during the mission.

CREW DATA
Crew Position	Name	Mission
Pilot	Yuri A. GAGARIN, 27, Soviet Air Force	1st

Flight Crew	1
Call Sign	Kedr (Cedar)
Back-up Crew	Gherman Titov (1st); Grigori Nelyubov (2nd)
EVAs	None (none planned)

MISSION DATA
Flight Duration	1 hour 48 minutes (official figure)
Distance Travelled	Approx. 38,625 km (24,000 miles)
Orbital Data	174.94 x 301.91 km (108.7 x 187.6 miles) with a period of 89.1 minutes
Landing	12 April 1961, at 10:55 MT (official time)
Landing Site	In a field of a collective farm near the village of Smelovka, 30.58 km (19 miles) south-west of the city of Engels, Russia, USSR
Milestones	1st human space flight. 1st Soviet/Russian crewed space flight. 1st Vostok crewed space flight.

Just before 05:30 Moscow Time (MT) on the morning of 12 April 1961, Yevgeni Karpov, the Director of the Cosmonaut Traning Centre, woke a young Soviet Air Force pilot with the simple words, "It's time to get up, Yuri."

Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin, 27, had only been in cosmonaut training for a year, his status known only to a few dozen colleagues, trainers and officials. Even his family were unaware of the importance of his new Air Force assignment, which had kept him away from home for several days at a time.

That morning, he awoke and prepared for a medical, a brief exercise programme and breakfast as a largely unknown figure. In a few short hours, this bright young man with an engaging smile would soon become one of the most famous human beings in history. On this day, Yuri Gagarin was to take the long-dreamt-of step into outer space, to become the first to experience the thrill, excitement, danger and events of human space flight.

Pre-launch

The selection of the man who would make the first space flight, aboard Vostok, was made by the State Commission on 8 April 1961. From the 20 men that had been selected in secret in March 1960, six had been formed into a special training group in the summer of that year to prepare for the first Vostok missions. Early in 1961, three of those six were assigned to train for that first flight, but the one who would take that historic mission would not be known until the official decree. Gagarin had long been the favourite, but Gherman Titov was also a leading contender to be the first person in space. Instead, he was now with Gagarin as his back-up, in case something prevented his friend from making the first flight. Supporting both of them was the third cosmonaut, Grigori Nelyubov.

Wearing their orange pressure suits, Gagarin and Titov departed by transfer bus from the preparation buildings to the launch pad at Baikonur cosmodrome. On the way, Gagarin needed to relieve himself, so the bus was stopped and he got out. He connected a tube to the waste management system inside his suit and 'wet the tyre' of the bus. In doing so, he began a tradition that has been followed by nearly every male cosmonaut on the way to the launch pad ever since.

The huge R-7 rocket had been rolled out to the pad on the back of a locomotive carriage early in the morning of 11 April. After it was raised over the flame trench, engineers fussed around it long into that night to make sure everything was perfect for such a special launch. Gagarin and Titov had spent the previous night in the nearby Cosmonaut Cottage, where they watched a movie (White Sons of the Desert). This would soon become another tradition for every subsequent cosmonaut. They also played pool and spoke with Chief Designer Sergei Korolev, the driving force behind the Soviet space programme.

Now, at the bottom of the launch gantry on the morning of 12 April, it was time to bid Gagarin farewell and place him inside the spacecraft. At the top of the gantry steps, Gagarin turned, smiled and waved, shouting, "See you soon." By 07:10 MT, he was inside the Vostok establishing communications with launch control. He used the call sign Kedr (Cedar), while ground control was called Zarya (Dawn). After a systems check, all he could do now was sit and wait for the launch. Then, after an hour lying on his back, the hatch was suddenly opened again. Apparently, it had not secured properly and pad workers had to recycle it before the all-clear could be given for launch.

Launch Phase

At 09:07 MT, Korolev reported the final moments of the countdown over the intercom: "Preliminary stage... intermediate... main... LIFT-OFF! We wish you a good flight. Everything is all right."

Aboard Vostok, Gagarin felt, rather than heard, the fuel valve activate as the rocket came alive around him. He heard a faint rumble beneath him as the noise of the engines built up, but did not immediately feel the initial upward movement. He said: "Poyekhali [Off we go] until we meet soon dear friends." The first human space flight had begun.

As Gagarin rode the rocket ever higher into the thinning atmosphere, he realised he was pinned back into his couch and found it difficult to talk. Two minutes into the flight, the four strap-on booster stages burned out and were separated, while the central core stage continued to burn. A minute after the boosters, the launch shroud also separated, exposing the Vostok spacecraft to the elements. At 09:12, five minutes into the flight, the core stage shut down (to be separated) and the smaller upper stage ignited. Gagarin experienced what the Americans would later call "the great train wreck". At shut down of the core stage Gagarin was flung forward against his seat harness, before being flung back against his seat as the upper stage ignited and the g-forces built up again. At 09:21, the upper stage shut down. The Vostok separated ten seconds later, placing it in orbit above the atmosphere. Gagarin called out: "I see the Earth! I see the clouds! it's beautiful! What beauty!"

A human being had reached space. At 09:58 MT (by which time Gagarin was already preparing to come back), Radio Moscow announced the fact to the listening world:

"Attention! This is Radio Moscow speaking... the world's first satellite spaceship, Vostok, with a man on board, was put into orbit around the Earth. The pilot is Major of the Air Force, Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin, a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."

The Very First Orbit

Looking out of the viewport, Gagarin commented on the curvature of the Earth and the dramatic changes in the colours, from the blue of the planet's atmosphere to the blackest black he had ever seen. As this was the first mission, he was only to complete one brief orbit of the Earth before returning home. There would be other, longer flights, but Gagarin was there to prove that humans could survive the rocket-powered ascent, could live in orbit and, most importantly, could withstand the re-entry and landing and survive to talk about the experience.

Gagarin reported on his condition and that of his spacecraft, as well as the view outside. He tried to write in his logbook, but the pencil had become detached and floated away. He reported on the view of Earth's terrain, on weightlessness where everything floated in front of his eyes and on how easy he found it to take refreshments.

All too soon it was time to come home. Gagarin awaited the updated landing commands from mission control and for the spacecraft to attain the correct point in its orbit before he could begin the fiery descent. If communications had broken down, Gagarin had a 'secret' three-digit code (1-2-5) to activate the descent engine, sealed in an envelope in his spacecraft.

At 09:57, Gagarin received the descent coding and prepared for landing. At 56 minutes into the mission, just as the world learned of his outstanding feat of exploration, the first commands were entered into the Vostok control panel to start the preparations for entry and landing.

Coming Home

At 10:25, the retrorockets ignited to slow the spacecraft down. Inside Vostok, Gagarin heard the bump as the rotation of his spacecraft continued while approaching the upper reaches of the atmosphere. After 40 seconds, he noticed the gradual increase in g-force before a cut-off and return to weightlessness for a few seconds. He also noted that not all of the preparatory lights on the control panel for re-entry were lit as they should have been, although those for the recently separated Instrument Module had been extinguished correctly. Then, suddenly, the Instrument Module lights came on again. Gagarin realised that the Instrument Module was dragging behind him as he approached entry, though he could not see it. The braking rocket worked correctly, but the added mass of the Instrument Module, which should have separated and burned up, might have affected his descent angle. Too steep and he would burn up; too shallow and he would skip out of the re-entry corridor, leaving him stranded to die in orbit.

Fortunately, the cables attaching the Vostok to the module snapped under the intense heat and Gagarin was soon on his way down. To record an official duration with the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) regulatory body, a pilot must land within the vehicle that returns them to the ground. For Vostok, this was not possible and the pilot ejected out of the descending capsule to land by parachute, which would not qualify for the record. To overcome this, the Soviets merely gave the landing time of the spacecraft and always implied that Gagarin was inside it. It was not until 1978 that it was reported he had ejected and landed separately.

At 7,010 metres (23,000 feet), the hatch behind Gagarin's head detached with a bang. The piston in his seat then pushed the couch containing the cosmonaut overboard and then the ejector motor fired to rocket him away from the plummeting Vostok. Gagarin separated from his seat and deployed his own parachute, recognising that he was over the Saratov area near the Volga where the cosmonauts had conducted parachute training. He could also see his now empty spacecraft descending beneath its own parachute as he headed for the ploughed fields of a collective farm.

At 10:55 MT, some 108 minutes after launch and following a flight of about 38,625 km (24,000 miles) and one orbit of the Earth, the first human in space was back on the ground, landing 30.58 km (19 miles) south-west of the city of Engels, near the village of Smelovka. When he landed, local farm workers ran over the fields to greet him as he took off his parachute and opened his visor to take a breath of fresh air. Gagarin had lifted off witnessed by some of the leading officials in his country's space programme and had flown into the history books, but his landing had been witnessed by a frightened little girl, Anna Takhtarova, and an indifferent cow.

As others ran across the fields to greet the orange-clad stranger who had fallen from the skies, they asked if he was the Yuri Gagarin they had heard of on the radio and whether it was really true that he had come from space. Gagarin smiled and told them that yes, it really was true he had just returned from space.

Cosmonaut Number 1

After a couple of days of rest in the local area, Gagarin was flown to Moscow for an official welcoming by Premier Nikita Khrushchev, his family and hundreds of Muscovites, who lined the airport and streets around Red Square.

On 14 April, Gagarin took his 'long walk' from the aeroplane at Vnukovo Airport, Moscow, across the red carpet (while hoping not to trip over his loose shoelace in front of all the cameras) to the podium, where he was pronounced a new Hero of the Soviet Union, a Columbus of the cosmos and a citizen of the world. The previously unknown Air Force officer became a true ambassador for the space programme and suited the role model status that was thrust upon him perfectly. But the other side of fame meant that his life would never be the same again. Indeed, in March 1968, just short of seven years after his space flight, he was killed in the crash of a MiG 15 while training for a second mission. He was just 34.

Since his flight, over 600 men and women have followed in his footsteps, many of them more than once. Gagarin's name has been given to the Cosmonaut Training Centre, to cities, awards and honours, buildings, a crater on the Moon and an asteroid. His office at Star City is enshrined as he left it and is visited by departing crews prior to leaving for the cosmodrome. Upon their return they place flowers at his statue and plant a tree in his honour. April 12 is celebrated as Cosmonautics Day in Russia as a nation remembers the heyday of Soviet space supremacy and communist achievements, when they were the leading space power. The day when Yuri Gagarin was - and forever will be - THE FIRST.