Item:
ONSV5899

Original Soviet Russian Space Program Vostok 2 Parachute Cord Piece with Signed Gherman Titov Photo

Item Description

Original Items: One-of-a-kind set. This is a great piece of Soviet Russian "Space Race" history! The Vostok programme (Russian: Восто́к - Orient or East) was a Soviet human spaceflight project to put the first Soviet citizens into low Earth orbit and return them safely. Competing with the United States Project Mercury, it succeeded in placing the first human into space, Yuri Gagarin, in a single orbit in Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. The Vostok capsule was developed from the Zenit spy satellite project, and its launch rocket was adapted from the existing R-7 Semyorka intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) design. The name "Vostok" was treated as classified information until Gagarin's flight was first publicly disclosed to the world press.

The programme carried out six crewed spaceflights between 1961 and 1963. The longest flight lasted nearly five days, and the last four were launched in pairs, one day apart. This exceeded Project Mercury's demonstrated capabilities of a longest flight of just over 34 hours, and of single missions.

The mission Vostok 2 was a Soviet space mission which carried cosmonaut Gherman Titov into orbit for a full day on August 6, 1961 to study the effects of a more prolonged period of weightlessness on the human body. Titov orbited the Earth over 17 times, exceeding the single orbit of Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1 − as well as the suborbital spaceflights of American astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom aboard their respective Mercury-Redstone 3 and 4 missions. Indeed, Titov's number of orbits and flight time would not be surpassed by an American astronaut until Gordon Cooper's Mercury-Atlas 9 spaceflight in May 1963.

This centerpiece of this set is an actual piece of the Vostok 2 Descent Parachute Cord, used when Titov was returning to earth. It is mounted on a nice description from the Space Associations Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics, Moscow. To the right of this is an original black and white signed photograph of Titov. 

All of this is very nicely mounted under a sheet of glass in a wooden frame. It measures about 16 1/4" W x 13 1/2" H x 1", and is in wonderful display condition. Included with this is a newspaper clipping of Gherman Titov's obituary from the Chicago Tribune newspaper, dated September 22, 2000. It details his life and space service, as well as the impact his space flight had.

This is a fantastic piece of Space Race memorabilia, ready to display!

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