On August 12 52 years ago Vostok-4 spacecraft with Pavel Popovich onboard was launched to perform the first team flight along with Vostok-3 orbital spacecraft piloted by Andriyan Nickolayev and launched a day earlier.
The cosmonauts had to conduct a series of researches and experiments concerning new medical and biological tasks including studying space flight duration and zero-gravity influence on human body, assessment of cosmonauts’ psychological state and working capacity at different points of the flight, determination of cosmonauts selection and training methods efficiency.
But first of all this flight became the first step to cope with the task of spacecrafts approaching and docking on the orbit. Successful accomplishment of this task enabled the scientists, designers and cosmonauts to increase flight duration and develop long-standing orbital stations.
During the flight two-way radio communication was established between Vostok-3 and Vostok-4 spacecrafts and it was the first time in history Soviet TV channels broadcasted cosmonauts’ work inside the spacecraft on-line.
Nickolayev and Popovich set world’s first space flight duration and range records. Total duration of the first world’s team spaceflight amounted 70 hours and 23 minutes, the range – 1975000 km.
