X-Nico

unusual facts about Vostok


Soviet space program

“For example the Vostok spacecraft was referred to as ‘object IIF63’ while its launch rocket was ‘object 8K72K’”.


FC Shakhter Karagandy

On 19 September 2008, Shakhter and Vostok were disqualified from the Kazakhstan Premier League for playing a fixed match, club coaches and management involved were banned from football for 60 months.

FC Vostok

On 19 September 2008, FC Shakhter and FC Vostok were disqualified from the Kazakhstan Premier League for playing a fixed match, club coaches and management involved were banned from football for 60 months.

First Orbit

By matching the orbit of the International Space Station to that of Vostok 1 as closely as possible, in terms of ground path and time of day, documentary filmmaker Christopher Riley and European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli were able to film the view that Yuri Gagarin saw on his pioneering orbital space flight.

Heinz Kaminski

At the Bochum Station, signals from a variety of space vehicles from the Sputniks, Luniks up to Vostok and Voskhod could be received, as well as in 1963 (for the first time in Europe) satellite pictures from the US weather satellite TIROS-8.

Kapitsa

Andrey Kapitsa - Soviet geographer and Antarctic explorer, discoverer of Lake Vostok

Korabl-Sputnik 5

The re-entry module of the spacecraft Vostok 3KA-2 was auctioned at Sotheby's on 12 April 2011, the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's spaceflight, Vostok 1.

Lake Vostok

Living Hydrogenophilus thermoluteolus micro-organisms have been found in Lake Vostok's deep ice core drillings; they are an extant surface-dwelling species.

Mineral industry of Kazakhstan

At the Stepnogorsk mining and chemical complex, which was Kazatomprom’s main production enterprise, plans called for increasing production by expanding the volumes of uranium production in Mining Group No. 1, further developing the Vostok field, and completing development of the Zvezdnoye field.

National Ice Core Laboratory

NICL currently houses ~14,000 m of ice cores collected from Greenland and Antarctica, including the GISP2, Siple Dome, and portions of the Vostok cores.

Soviet spacecraft call signs

Pavel Popovich and Andriyan Nikolayev's call signs in their joint flight in Vostok-3 and Vostok-4, Sokol ("falcon") and Berkut ("golden eagle"), were widely popularized by soviet media.

Special Battalions Vostok and Zapad

Zapad was commanded by career officer Said-Magomed Kakiyev while Vostok was controlled by the controversial Yamadayev clan (thus earning them the name of Yamadaevtsy, or "Yamadayev men"), which was powerful enough to rival Kadyrov.

Zapad servicemen were loyal to the Russian government, while the core of Vostok were former separatist fighters of the 2nd Battalion of the National Guard of Ichkeria from Gudermes, who had fought against Russian troops in the First Chechen War of 1994-1996; they then switched to the federal side and swore allegiance to Russia.

Valentina Ponomaryova

Ponomaryova established herself one of the leading candidates with Valentina Tereshkova and Irina Solovyova, and a joint mission profile was developed that would see two women launched into space, on solo Vostok flights on consecutive days.

Vostok 6

On 18 June 1983, during the 20th anniversary of Vostok 6's orbits, Sally Ride aboard OV-099 Space Shuttle Challenger for mission STS-7, became the third woman in space, and first non-Soviet woman, and first American woman, on a 5-man mission.

Vostok watches

The Vostok Company was founded in 1942 when one of the Moscow watch-making plants of the First Moscow Watch Factory was evacuated to Chistopol, a small town located on the Kama River in Tatarstan.

2013, Vostok is the official watch merchandise of the 2013 Summer Universiade in Kazan.

A popular myth claims that after the Desert Storm operation in 1992, the Pentagon awarded soldiers from the allied forces with a special edition Vostok Amphibian military watch called Desert Shield.


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