Soyuz 9

Mission

Soyuz 9

• Type: Human Exploration
• Orbit: Low Earth Orbit

Soyuz 9 carried cosmonauts Andrian Nikolayev & Vitali Sevastyanov to orbit. The mission lasted 17 days, 16 hours & 58 minutes completing 288 orbits around Earth. They broke the endurance record held by Gemini 7 for 5 years. This was the first crewed space launch that lifted off at night. As of 2016 it still holds the record for longest crewed flight by a solo spacecraft. The goal of the mission was to conduct various pysiological and biomedical experiments on themselves and invastigate possible social implications of extended duration spaceflight.

Location

31/6

Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of Kazakhstan

31/6 has witnessed the launch of 426 rockets, including 426 orbital launch attempts. While Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of Kazakhstan, has been the site for 1560 rocket launches.

The Baikonur Cosmodrome is a spaceport operated by Russia within Kazakhstan. Located in the Kazakh city of Baikonur, it is the largest operational space launch facility in terms of area. All Russian crewed spaceflights are launched from Baikonur.

Agency

Soviet Space Program

The Soviet space program, was the national space program of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) actived from 1930s until disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Soviet Union's space program was mainly based on the cosmonautic exploration of space and the development of the expandable launch vehicles, which had been split between many design bureaus competing against each other. Over its 60-years of history, the Russian program was responsible for a number of pioneering feats and accomplishments in the human space flight, including the first intercontinental ballistic missile (R-7), first satellite (Sputnik 1), first animal in Earth orbit (the dog Laika on Sputnik 2), first human in space and Earth orbit (cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1), first woman in space and Earth orbit (cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6), first spacewalk (cosmonaut Alexei Leonov on Voskhod 2), first Moon impact (Luna 2), first image of the far side of the Moon (Luna 3) and unmanned lunar soft landing (Luna 9), first space rover (Lunokhod 1), first sample of lunar soil automatically extracted and brought to Earth (Luna 16), and first space station (Salyut 1). Further notable records included the first interplanetary probes: Venera 1 and Mars 1 to fly by Venus and Mars, respectively, Venera 3 and Mars 2 to impact the respective planet surface, and Venera 7 and Mars 3 to make soft landings on these planets.

Learn more about Soviet Space Program