Voskhod

the name of a series of Soviet multimanned spacecraft, designed for orbital flights around the earth.

Voskhod was a three-man spacecraft placed into orbit on Oct. 12, 1964; it had a weight of 5,320 kg, and its crew consisted of the ship’s commander V. M. Komarov, research worker K. P. Feoktistov, and the physician B. B. Egorov. The duration of the flight was 24 hours and 17 minutes; the parameters of the orbit were as follows: perigee, 177.5 km and apogee, 408 km. On Oct. 13, 1964, the spacecraft made a landing 312 km northeast of Kustanai. In design and equipment the spacecraft Voskhod was markedly different from the spacecraft of the Vostok series. It was equipped with a soft-landing system, a reserve retrorocket, and new instrument equipment (a supplementary orientation system with ion transmitters, improved television and radio engineering apparatus, etc.). The tasks of the flight were to test a multi-place, manned spacecraft, to study the work capacity and interaction in flight of a group of cosmonauts who were specialists in various fields of science and technology, and to conduct research in physics and technology and an extended program of medical and biological research.

Voskhod 2 was a two-man spacecraft; launched into orbit on Mar. 18, 1965, its total flight lasted 26 hours. Its orbit parameters were as follows: perigee, 173 km and apogee, 498 km. The ship had an air lock and was equipped for spacewalking. The spacecraft’s crew consisted of the ship’s commander P. I. Beliaev and copilot A. A. Leonov. During the flight Leonov became the first cosmonaut in history to space walk. Dressed in a full-pressure suit with an autonomic life-support system, he was outside the spacecraft cabin for 20 minutes and outside the air lock in open space for 12 minutes, at times moving away from the spacecraft at distances of up to 5 m. Thus for the first time it was practically confirmed that a cosmonaut could venture out of the space-craft in special equipment and work. Leonov’s exit from the spacecraft and his space walk were photographed by motion-picture cameras installed on the outside of the spacecraft and in the air-lock compartment. On March 19 the spacecraft landed in the Perm’ Raion. The landing was carried out by the use of a manual control system.