  vostok 3 (, orient 3 or east 3) was a spaceflight of the soviet space program intended to determine the ability of the human body to function in conditions of weightlessness and test the endurance of the vostok 3ka spacecraft over longer flights. cosmonaut andriyan nikolayev orbited the earth 64 times over nearly four days in space, august 11â15, 1962, a feat which would not be matched by nasa until the gemini program (1965â1966). vostok 3 and vostok 4 were launched a day apart on trajectories that brought the spacecraft within approximately  of one another. the cosmonauts aboard the two capsules also communicated with each other via radio, the first ship-to-ship communications in space.{{cite journal |date=30 august 1962|title="group space flight" desc
1962_in_the_Soviet_Union Human_spaceflights Spacecraft_launched_in_1962 Spacecraft_which_reentered_in_1962 Vostok_program