a dog named Chernushka, dozens of mice, some reptiles, and the first-ever guinea pig to fly to space. The dummy and his gang of animals launched on a Vostok-K carrier rocket from the Baikonur ...

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin lifted off from Baikonur in the Vostok I capsule, becoming the first human in space. A year later, Soviet engineers described a space station comprised of modules ...

Could Mercury be that much smaller than the Soviet spacecraft?’ And that was indeed the case. The Vostok spacecraft weighed over 10,000 pounds. The Mercury spacecraft, with the escape tower ...