Related News
London exhibition offers rare look at secrets of Soviet space race
Print Edition
THE space technology that saw the Soviet Union propel the first dog, man and woman into orbit has gone on show in London, most of it being exhibited outside Russia for the first time.
Speaking at the opening of the exhibition at the Science Museum, which runs until March 13, the first woman in space Valentina Tereshkova recalled her affection for the spacecraft that took her into orbit for three days in 1963.
“I see Vostok-6 quite often in the center for cosmonaut training,” she said. “And every time I pass it by I stroke it and say ‘My lovely one, my best and most beautiful friend; my best and most beautiful man.’”
Over 50 years later, she is still excited to pose in front of the capsule as it is displayed at the Science Museum, now dented and blackened by flames as it entered the atmosphere.
Tereshkova, now 78, kept quiet on one of the best-kept secrets: how she coped when she discovered she was sent into space without her toothbrush.
“I am very resourceful, as any woman would be,” Tereshkova said with a mysterious smile.
Much more serious was a problem with the capsule on her return journey. Due to a programing error, it began to rise rather than to go down.
“That was a real mistake,” she recalled. “I would have gone up and up instead of going down to Earth.”
Luckily, ground engineers managed to fix the spacecraft’s trajectory, and it began descending to Earth at 27,000 kilometers an hour. Tereshkova jumped out in a parachute at 7,000 meters altitude.
The astronaut’s treasured Vostok-6 is just one of several early spacecraft displayed in the exhibition, “Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age.”
Also on display are several Sputnik satellites and a lunar lander used to train cosmonauts how to land on the moon in a Soviet program kept secret from the world until 1989.
In all, 150 objects are on display, from early Russian artistic impressions of space exploration to real space suits.
Often classified top secret for decades and many from private collections and archives, the collection demonstrates the initial supremacy of the Soviet Union in the 20th century space race. “Many of these objects have never been seen by Russians,” said Science Museum director Ian Blatchford.
“We think that the first nation on the moon was Russia,” Blatchford said, referring to the unmanned Luna 9, the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the moon, in 1966. “An incredible achievement, not given full respect,” he said.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
