Vostok 2

Vostok 2 (, Orient 2 or East 2) was a Soviet space mission. It carried cosmonaut Gherman Titov into orbit for a full day to study the effects of a long period of weightlessness on the human body.  Titov orbited the earth over 17 times. Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1 had only done one orbit.

The flight was an almost complete success. Problems included not turning on a heater which meant the temperature dropped to , a period of space sickness, and problems on re-entry when the reentry module failed to separate cleanly from its service module.

Titov took manual control of the spacecraft for a short while. The Soviets admitted that Titov did not land with his spacecraft. Titov said he ejected from his capsule to test another landing system. It is now known that all Vostok program landings were done this way.

The re-entry capsule was destroyed during development of the Voskhod spacecraft.

As of 2012, Titov is the youngest person to reach space. He was 25 years old at launch.

References

Category:Soviet spacecraft
Category:1960s in spaceflight