Word: vostok
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...line dispatch, Tass reported that the mission was aborted when an upper stage of the Vostok booster rocket began carrying Soyuz 18 off course; at that point, the rocket shut down automatically and the spacecraft was set free for return to earth. The two cosmonauts, Vasily Lazarev, 46, and Oleg Makarov, 41, seem to have escaped injury, but Western observers pointed out that if the upper-stage engine had fired a few seconds longer, the cosmonauts might well have come down in China...
...dramatic. Just as a major international space conference was winding up in Leningrad last week, and U.S. Moon Walker Neil Armstrong was inspecting the cosmonauts' Star City compound outside Moscow, the Soviets launched a two-man spaceship, Soyuz 9. into orbit around the earth. On board were Vostok 3 Cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev, 40-husband of the world's only spacewoman, Valentina Tereshkova-and Rookie Vitaly Sevastyanov, 35. They were the first Russians in space since last October's triple launch of manned Soviet spacecraft...
Last week's Soyuz shot was notable for one innovation. It was the first manned nighttime launch by either the Soviet Union or the U.S. The Russians also gave wide publicity to the shot, releasing films of Soyuz atop a Vostok rocket on its prd shortly before launch. One photograph showed three service towers retracted like the unfolded petals of a gigantic flower...
...week's end, the cosmonauts reported that they were feeling well, and Soyuz 9 seemed on the way toward breaking a Soviet record for the longest manned space flight: the 5-day orbital mission of Vostok...