October 12, 1964: Voskhod 1 Carries Three Into Orbit

Posted October 12, 2026 · Space

On October 12, 1964, a Soviet rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying something new: a spacecraft with three people on board. Voskhod 1 was the first flight in history to carry more than one person into space, a milestone that came during the intense space race between the Soviet Union and the United States. The flight lasted just over a day, but it showed that a crew could live and work together in orbit.

Meet the crew

The crew was Vladimir Komarov, the commander, Konstantin Feoktistov, a spacecraft designer and engineer, and Boris Yegorov, a physician. Yegorov became the first doctor to fly in space, and he studied how the human body responded to weightlessness during the mission. Feoktistov had helped design the spacecraft he was flying in, which made the mission a rare case of an engineer testing his own work in orbit.

Making room for three

Voskhod was adapted from the single-seat Vostok capsule. To fit three seats inside the cramped cabin, the crew flew without spacesuits and without ejection seats, a trade-off that would be considered extremely risky today. The spacecraft completed 16 orbits of Earth in a little over 24 hours and landed on October 13, 1964, using a braking rocket fired just before touchdown to soften the landing.

Voskhod was a short-lived program. Voskhod 2 followed in March 1965 and carried the first spacewalk, performed by Alexei Leonov. Komarov later flew Soyuz 1 in 1967 and died when its parachute system failed during the return to Earth. The flight of Voskhod 1 is remembered as an early step toward the multi-person crews that are routine today. The International Space Station, for example, has been continuously occupied by international crews since November 2000.

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