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Vostok programme
The
Vostok programme
(, ,
Orient
or
East
) was a
Soviet
human spaceflight
project to put the first Soviet citizens into
low Earth orbit
and return them safely. Competing with the United States
Project Mercury
, it succeeded in placing the first human,
Yuri Gagarin
, into space, in a single orbit in
Vostok 1
on April 12, 1961. The Vostok
capsule
was developed from the
Zenit spy satellite
project and adapted the Vostok
launch rocket
from the existing
R-7 Semyorka
intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM) design. The name "Vostok" was treated as
classified information
until Gagarin's flight was first publicly disclosed to the world press.
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