The Voskhod spacecraft is most famous for the first space walk by Alexei Leonov. It consisted of two missions. Voskhod was adaption of the Vostok design. Both launches were from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Further Voskhod missions were planned for 1966 and beyond, but they were cancelled because of Voskhod 2 problems, the death of Sergei Korolev and in order concentrate on developing the Soyuz Spacecraft.
Voskhod 1
Launch date: October 12, 1964.
Landing site: 312 km north-east of Kustanai
Mass: 5,320 Kg
The first mission was flown by three cosmonauts. They were Vladimir Komarov, Boris Yegorov and Konstantin Feoktisov. It was the first three crew manned spacecraft in space. The mission lasted only one day, and the crew returned safely on October 13th.
Voskhod 2
Launch date: March 18, 1965
Landing site: Near Perm in the Ural mountains in heavy forest
Mass: 5,682 Kg
The mission consisted of two cosmonauts: Pilot Pavel Belyayev and co-Pilot Alexei Leonov. This mission had many problems.
The first ever spacewalk was performed by Alexei Leonov. The space walk lasted about 20 minutes. Alexei had problems in re-entering the spacecraft because his space suit had enlarged slightly. He had to let air leak out of his space suit in order to squeeze back inside.
They landed off their target near Perm in the Ural mountains in heavy forest. The crew spent the night in the woods surrounded by wolves before being located. When the ground crew finally located them, it took a day to chop through the forest and recover them on skis.
Did you know?
The first launch of the Gemini program carrying two American astronauts occurred a few days after the Soviet spacewalk. The United States made its first spacewalk during Gemini 4.
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