First Pictures of Earth from a Soviet Spacecraft

摘要

When the diaries of Air Force General and cosmonaut training chief Nikolai Kamanin were published in the mid-1990s, a puzzling fact came to light about the final two unmanned test flights of the Vostok spacecraft on 9 March and 25 March 1961. These two missions, officially announced by the Soviet Union as the fourth and fifth korabl-sputnik ("satellite ship"), were dress rehearsals for Yuriy Gagarin's single-orbit mission on 12 April 1961 and each carried a dummy cosmonaut as well as a dog and various biological specimens. These facts had been announced by the Soviet Union at the time, but judging from Kamanin's diaries, the missions had an additional objective.