The rocket also served as a basis for the three-stage Vostok Rocket that inaugurated the era of manned flights on April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin started off into orbit on the Vostok 1 spacecraft.

On March 9, 1961, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 9. This mission was a test flight of the Vostok spacecraft, which would later carry the first cosmonauts into space. Inside the spacecraft was a ...

Vostok 1. Officially, he came back to Earth in his capsule. Though it subsequently emerged that he actually parachuted to safety when it was still 7 kilometres from the ground. Despite that glitch ...