Who were the Vanguard Six Cosmonauts?
- Aeryn Avilla
- Apr 12
- 11 min read
In February 1960, the Soviet Union selected twenty Soviet Air Force pilots to serve as the nation's first space explorers. On May 30, six were hand-picked to begin training for the upcoming Vostok missions, a series of six single-pilot orbital spaceflights. Nicknamed the Vanguard Six (or sometimes the Sochi Six), these men were Yuri Gagarin, Anatoli Kartashov, Andriyan Nikolayev, Pavel Popovich, Gherman Titov, and Valentin Varmalov. Unfortunately, Kartashov and Varmalov were injured during training and were medically disqualified from flying in space. They were replaced by Valery Bykovsky and Grigory Nelyubov. On January 18, 1961, Gagarin, Titov, and Nelyubov (in that order) were ranked as the top three cosmonauts and hopefully, the first three men in space [1].
Unlike America's Mercury Seven astronauts, their identifications were kept secret until they safely reached orbit. As a result, the names of those who did not fly in space, whether they left the cosmonaut corps voluntarily, were dismissed, or were killed during flight training, remained unknown for decades until Premier Gorbachev's policy of Glasnost, or "openness" with the Western world. No photograph of all twenty cosmonauts together exists.
Nine trips to space were made between the Vanguard Six cosmonauts from 1961 to 1978, most significantly the first five of the six Vostok missions.
Valery Bykovsky (1934 - 2019)
Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky was born in Pavlovsky Posad, Russia on August 2, 1934. At 16, he began flight theory lessons at the Moscow City Aviation Club and enrolled in the Kachinsk Military Aviation Academy at 18. During his time in the Soviet Air Force, he served as a fighter pilot and an instructor pilot and participated in the testing of the Tupolev Tu-16 jet bomber and the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19 fighter jet, logging more than 5,000 flight hours.
Bykovsky's first assignment as a cosmonaut was as backup pilot to Andriyan Nikolayev on Vostok 3 in 1962, and his first mission was Vostok 5, a joint flight with Vostok 6 on June 14, 1963 [2]. Callsign Yastreb ("Hawk"), Vostok 5 set a human endurance record of five days in space and completed 82 orbits, photographing the Earth and documenting the growth of peas. Upon returning to Earth, he was awarded Hero of the Soviet Union, the nation's highest honor.
Bykovsky was supposed to command the original Soyuz 2 mission, which would have been a joint flight with Soyuz 1 and have two cosmonauts perform an EVA from Soyuz 2 to Soyuz 1 in April 1967. While Soyuz 1 was in orbit, Soyuz 2's launch was canceled due thunderstorms and the former was called back to Earth early due to issues with the spacecraft. Soyuz 1's main parachute did not deploy and its sole pilot, Vladimir Komarov, was killed when his spacecraft slammed into the ground.
Bykovsky's next flight assignment was as commander of Soyuz 22, an Earth sciences mission, in September 1976. The spacecraft was originally a backup for the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and had the callsign Yastreb— it was (and still is) a common practice for commanding cosmonauts to give their capsule the same callsign as one of their previous spacecraft. Bykovsky and pilot Vladimir Aksyonov spent a week photographing parts of the Soviet Union from orbit, studied how plants grew in artificial gravity generated by a small centrifuge, and even watched how fish behaved in a weightless environment. Bykovsky's final spaceflight was as commander of Soyuz 31. He and East German citizen Sigmund Jähn visited the Salyut 6 space station in late August/early September 1978 on the third manned Interkosmos mission, bringing fresh fruits and vegetables to the resident Soyuz 29 crew.
Bykovsky retired from the Soviet space program and the Soviet Air Force as a major general in the late 1980s. He established the Russian Federation of Cosmonautics in 1998 and served as its president until his death on March 27, 2019. He was also an artist, a photographer, and a sportsman.
Yuri Gagarin (1934 - 1968)
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was born on March 9, 1934 from the village of Klushino, Russia. His family suffered greatly during the German occupation during World War II. While in foundryman training in Saratov, he began volunteering at a local aviation club for training as a Soviet air cadet. In November 1957, he graduated from flight school and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force. He was stationed at Luostari Air Base, near the Soviet Union's border with Norway.
On April 8, 1961, after multiple months of special Vanguard Six examinations and training, Gagarin was approved as the pilot of Vostok 1 with Gherman Titov as his backup and Grigory Nelyubov as Titov's backup. On April 12, at 11:07 AM local time (6:07 AM UTC), Gagarin lifted off from LC-1 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome onboard a Vostok rocket, exclaiming, "poyekhali!" meaning "let's go!". He and spacecraft Kedr ("Cedar") spent 108 minutes completing one Earth orbit. Once he reentered the atmosphere, he ejected from his capsule and touched down 16 miles (26 km) southwest of Engels under his own parachute. The first man in space returned to Earth.
Gagarin was an instant international hero and celebrity and in the years following his flight, visited 30 countries on goodwill tours and served as Deputy Training Director of the Cosmonaut Training Center (which would later be named in his honor). While he never visited the U.S., he met Gemini 4 astronauts Jim McDivitt and Ed White at the 1965 Paris Air Show. In 1967, he was Vladimir Komarov's backup on Soyuz 1 but after the tragedy, was permanently grounded from future spaceflights and prohibited from flying regular aircraft— the Soviet Union refused to risk the life of its biggest space hero. In February 1968, he graduated with honors from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy and was allowed to fly again...unfortunately.
On March 27, 1968, while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky air base, Gagarin and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin crashed their MiC-15UTI about 40 miles (65 km) from base. They were killed immediately. Multiple investigations were conducted by the Soviet Air Force, the Soviet government, and the KGB in the years following the accident and while there is still some mystery surrounding the death of the first man in space, the official cause of the crash was attributed to its pilot— Gagarin likely swerved to avoid collision with another object (a bird, a weather balloon, and another aircraft are contenders) and the aircraft spun out of control. Gagarin's and Seryogin's ashes were interred at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis [3].
Gagarin playing ice hockey and posing with the Sphinx in Egypt in 1962 (Roscosmos)
A number of buildings, streets, and towns have been named in Gagarin's honor since 1961, including the Gagarin air Force Academy, the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, and Gagarin's Start, the launch pad at Baikonur from where Vostok 1 lifted off. Tributes to him were left on the moon by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and by Apollo 15 astronauts Dave Scott and Jim Irwin. In 2011, the United Nations declared April 12 the International Day of Human Space Flight. Soyuz TMA-21, which launched in April 2011, had the callsign Gagarin. Yuri was also a fan of hockey and liked to play goaltender, and the Kontinental Hockey League's championship trophy is named the Gagarin Cup.
Grigory Nelyubov (1934 - 1966)
Grigory Grigoryevhich Nelyubov was born in the village of Porfiryevka in the Crimean Autonomous SSR (now Ukraine), on March 31, 1934. He flew MiG-19's in the Soviet Air Force's Black Sea Naval Fleet and was promoted to senior lieutenant before being selected as a cosmonaut. Nelyubov was Gagarin's second backup for his historic first flight and as backup for Andriyan Nikolayev and Pavel Popovich in mid-1962. An injury sometime afterward grounded him from flight.
On March 27, 1963, Nelyubov, along with cosmonauts Ivan Anikeyev and Valentin Filatyev, resisted arrest for drunk and disorderly conduct at Chkalovskaya station. He was given opportunities to apologize to the duty officer and the patrol chief and possibly retain his job, but he refused. All three were dismissed from the cosmonaut corps on April 17.
Nelyubov was sent fly interceptors in the Far East. His comrades did not believe he was once a cosmonaut and disgraced, he succumbed to alcoholism and depression. On February 18, 1966, he drunkenly stepped in front of an oncoming train at Ippolitovka station and was killed. It was officially ruled a suicide. He was buried outside Kiev and parts from crashed aircraft were used to form part of his headstone, though it was vandalized to steal the aluminum it contained. Nelyubov and other cosmonauts who did not fly in space were airbrushed out of photos and his identity was not revealed until 1986. He has since received a new monument at his final resting place and a hall at the Mikhailovski museum.
Cosmonauts on the bus headed to the launch pad for Vostok 1. Gagarin is in the foreground with Titov suited up behind him. Nelyubov stands behind Gagarin/next to Titov (Roscosmos) | Nelyubov in a Vostok spacesuit (via spacefacts.de)
Andriyan Nikolayev (1929 - 2004)
Andriyan Grigoryevich Nikolayev was born on September 5, 1929 in Shorshely, Russia. He was ethnically Chuvash so was also the first Turkic cosmonaut.
Nikolayev's first assignment as a cosmonaut was as the backup to Gherman Titov's Vostok 2. On August 11, 1962, he became the fifth person to orbit the Earth as pilot of Vostok 3, the first joint spaceflight [4]. Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 investigated the human body's performance in a weightless environment for multiple days and evaluated ground control's capability to launch and control two manned missions at the same time. Nikolayev communicated with Pavel Popovich via shortwave radio, achieving the first ship-to-ship communication in space. While the two could not rendezvous, they were briefly within visual range of each other [5].
Nikolayev made his second and last spaceflight as commander of Soyuz 9 in June 1970 after serving as backup of Soyuz 8. The callsign for both his Vostok 3 and Soyuz 9 spacecraft was Sokol ("Falcon"). He and Vitaly Sevastyanov broke Gemini 7's 14-day endurance record by staying in orbit for 17.5 days and orbiting the Earth 288 times. Soyuz 9 was in preparation for the first missions to the Salyut space station scheduled to launch the following spring [6]. During their two-and-a-half weeks in space, the pair of cosmonauts took photos of geographical features and weather on Earth, practiced astronavigation, conducted biomedical experiments regarding long-duration manned spaceflight, and watched the 1970 FIFA World Cup. They even played a game of chess against fellow cosmonaut Viktor Gorbatko and head of cosmonauts Nikolai Kamanin back on Earth in their downtime. In 1970, Nikolayev and Sevastyanov spent ten days in the U.S. and met with astronauts, including Apollo 11's moonwalkers Armstrong and Aldrin.
Nikolayev was married to Valentina Tereshkova from 1963 to 1982 and had one daughter. The two survived the assassination attempt on General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev in 1969 when a Soviet Army deserter fired shots into a limousine carrying Brezhnev and four cosmonauts [7]. He retired from the Soviet Air Force as a major general in 1982 and passed away on July 3, 2004 from a heart attack.
Pavel Popovich (1930 - 2009)
Pavel Romanovich Popovich was born in the city of Uzyn in the Ukrainian SSR on October 5, 1930. He joined the Soviet Air Force in 1954 and flew multiple aircraft, including the MiG-15, until his cosmonaut selection.
His first assignment as a cosmonaut was as capsule communicator for Vostok 1 and his first flight into space was onboard Vostok 4, during which he became the first ethnic Ukrainian in space. In August 1962, he and his spacecraft Berkut ("Golden Eagle") participated in the first joint spaceflight with Andriyan Nikolayev's Vostok 3. Popovich became a cosmonaut instructor in 1964 and by 1972, was named the chief of cosmonaut training. He also trained to command a lunar landing in the mid-late 1960s but never did due to a number of problems with the Soviet's manned lunar program. Nor did he command Soyuz 2, which flew unmanned after the Soyuz 1 disaster.
Popovich made his second and last spaceflight as commander of Soyuz 14 (Berkut), the first mission to the Salyut 3 space station. Salyut 3 was the publicized name of the military reconnaissance Almaz 1 station. In July 1974, he and Yuri Artyukhin spent just over two weeks onboard the station testing photography equipment and conducting biomedical studies.
In 1980, Popovich was appointed deputy chief of the Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City and retired from the Soviet Air Force as a major general in 1982. His first wife was Marina Zhikhoreva, the first Soviet woman to break the sound barrier and a candidate for the first corps of female cosmonauts. Popovich passed from a brain hemorrhage on September 29, 2009.
Gherman Titov (1935 - 2000)
Gherman Stepanovich Titov was born on September 11, 1935 in the village of Verkhneye Zhilino in the West Siberian Krai (now the Altai Krai), Russia. He served in two Air Guard regiments of the 41st Air Division in the Leningrad military district before cosmonaut selection.
Titov's first assignment as a cosmonaut was as Yuri Gagarin's backup for Vostok 1. He accompanied Gagarin to the launch pad in his orange flight suit should anything incapacitate Gagarin at the last minute, and shortly after Vostok 1 returned to Earth was informed he'd be making the Soviet Union's next trip to space. His three-orbit mission was lengthened to 17 orbits, or one full day. On August 6, 1961, Gherman Titov onboard his spacecraft Oryol ("Eagle") became the second person to orbit the Earth and the first person to experience space adaptation syndrome, or space sickness [8]. He also took the first photos and movie of Earth from inside a spacecraft [9]. At 25 years and 11 months old, Titov is the youngest person to ever orbit the Earth.
In May 1962, Titov became the first Soviet cosmonaut to visit the United States. Accompanied by John Glenn, he spent 12 days meeting with astronauts and other heads of the space program, touring the country, and holding press conferences. After Vostok 2, Titov graduated from the Chkalov test pilot school and worked on the Spiral spaceplane program, a predecessor of the Buran shuttle program. Frustrated with the lack of flight opportunities for him specifically following the Soyuz 1 disaster, he left the cosmonaut corps in 1970 but continued to work for the space program until 1991. He retired from the Soviet Air Force as a colonel general and passed away from cardiac arrest on September 20, 2000. Titov is mentioned in Arthur C. Clarke's 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two (and its 1984 film adaptation 2010: The Year We Make Contact).
[1] The equivalent American astronauts were Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and John Glenn.
[2] Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space onboard Vostok 6.
[3] It is tradition for astronauts and cosmonauts flying onboard Soyuz to visit Gagarin's final resting place and leave him red carnations.
[4] American astronauts John Glenn and Scott Carpenter orbited in February and May 1962.
[5] The first manned space rendezvous was between the American Gemini 7 and Gemini 6A spacecraft in December 1965.
[6] The first mission to successfully dock with Salyut 1 was Soyuz 11 in June 1971. The crew died of asphyxiation during reentry on June 29.
[7] The other cosmonauts were Alexei Leonov and Georgy Beregovoy.
[8] This is the first time the eagle was used to symbolize manned spaceflight. As mentioned earlier, Pavel Popovich's Vostok 4 and Soyuz 14 spacecraft were named Berkut ("Golden Eagle") as well as Alexei Leonov's Voskhod 2 EVA suit. Golden eagles live throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Gemini 4's callsign would have been American Eagle and Apollo 11's Lunar Module was Eagle, both after the bald eagle, which is native to North America.
[9] Neither Gagarin, Shepard, nor Grissom carried cameras on their historic flights, though Shepard and Grissom were photographed by automated cameras inside their cockpits. In Shepard's defense, his Freedom 7 spacecraft did not have a window.
Bibliography
Burgess, Colin and Hall, Rex. The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team: Their Lives and Legacies. Springer-Praxis, 2008.
Burgess, Colin and Vis, Bert. Interkosmos: The Eastern Bloc's Early Space Program. Springer-Praxis, 2016.
"Gherman Titov, Second to Orbit the Earth, Dies." collectSPACE, September 2000. http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-092100a.html
Newkirk, Dennis. Almanac of Soviet Manned Spaceflight. Gulf Publishing Co., 1990.
"Pavel Popovich, Sixth Man in Orbit, Dies." collectSPACE, September 2009. http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-093009b.html
Reichhardt, Tony. "The First Photographer in Space." Smithsonian Magazine, August 2011. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-first-photographer-in-space-44654847/
Uri, John. "60 Years Ago: Astronaut Glenn Meets Cosmonaut Titov." NASA, May 2022. https://www.nasa.gov/history/60-years-ago-astronaut-glenn-meets-cosmonaut-titov/
Uri, John. "60 Years Ago: Soviets Select Their First Cosmonauts." NASA, February 2020. https://www.nasa.gov/history/60-years-ago-soviets-select-their-first-cosmonauts/#:~:text=On%20May%2030%2C%201960%2C%20Soviet,%2C%20Popovich%2C%20Titov%20and%20Varlamov.
This post was written entirely without the use of AI (sorry HAL). Go Cats!
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