Today in the history of astronomy, the first space mission with more than one person on board – without a spacesuit.
The Voshkod 1 capsule is shown here on display at the London Science Museum. Credit: Andrew Gray/CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Voshkod 1, launched on October 12, 1964, inaugurated the second series of Soviet manned space flights and represented the first mission by any nation to carry a multi-person crew, including three astronauts.
- The accommodation of three crew members within a capsule of dimensions unchanged from prior Vostok flights was motivated by political pressure, despite technological advances.
- This mission was pioneering as the first crewed space flight where participants did not wear spacesuits, a measure attributed to the limited internal capacity of the spacecraft.
- Importantly, Voshkod 1 introduced the collection of onboard biomedical data, with a crew medical doctor collecting physiological information to inform planning for future long-duration space flights.
Voshkod 1 began the second series of manned Soviet space flights following the Vostok mission, the first mission to send humans into space. When the spacecraft launched on October 12, 1964, for a flight of more than 24 hours, it was the seventh crewed space flight for the Soviet Union – but the first for any country with more than one person onboard.
There were three cosmonauts in the capsule: Vladimir Komarov, Konstantin Feoktistyev and Boris Yegorov. Although technical improvements had been made since the Vostok flights, the size of the ship had not changed, and political pressure led the space program to include three crew members instead of the planned two. (Each flight of the Vostok carried only one person aboard.) As a result, Voshkod 1 was the first flight in which the crew did not wear spacesuits – the spacecraft simply did not have the capacity for them. This was also the first mission during which onboard biomedical information was collected. Yegorov was a medical doctor who collected blood samples during the flight and measured his companions’ blood pressure, brain waves, and muscle condition. The data collected would help the Soviets plan future long space flights.
