I have been ill during the last few days and therefore there has been a break with blogging. I feel much better now and it’s just great to be back for blogging. Stomach diseases are so annoying..

Have you ever wondered that what kinds of vehicles were used to bring the first humans to the orbit of the Earth? The very first space craft that brought a human being to the orbit was called Vostok 1. It was a capsule that looked like a ball. This space craft with a diameter of 2.3 meters was covered with a shield material in order to avoid burning when landing.

Before sending the first man to the orbit, Russians launched five unmanned Vostok space crafts between 1960 and 1961. In April 12th in 1961, just few weeks before Americans, the first Russian manned Vostok space craft was launched. 27 years old pilot Juri Gagarin was launched to the orbit at 4:10 am. After flying 78 minutes Juri Gagarin started landing. Because Vostok did not have rocket to break, Juri Gagarin jumped out with his ejection seat and landed with a parachute. Americans did the same ten months later.

As soon as the first men had entered the space, United States and Russia started to develop a space craft that would be able to carry more people to space. Russia wanted to be faster than US and modified Vostok space craft so that it could carry three people instead of one. One ejection seat was replaced by three ejection seats. The new space craft was tested once in an unmanned flight, and after that three cosmonauts were launched to the orbit in October 12th in 1964. The flight lasted only one day and it was leaded by Vladimir Komarov.

Voskhod 2 was launched in March 18th in 1965 carrying two cosmonauts, Pavel Beljajev and Aleksei Leonov, with pressure suits. 90 minutes after ignition Leonov moved through the air-lock and locked him to the space craft with a five-meter rope. By this Leonov became the first man who has “walked” in space.

Vostok and Voskhod were the first space crafts bringing human being to space. In this competition Russia was the winner, but the competition continued when United States announced that they are going to land on Moon. As many people know, Americans were the first ones in moon, but how many people know that Russians managed to land an unmanned probe on moon and sent the first picture back to Earth. This interesting topic but let’s discuss about it in future articles.

Image source.