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| A Vostok 3 launch cover featuring a special Kiev postmark dated August 11, 1962. |
Vostok 3 was launched on August 11, 1962, carrying cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev for a nearly four-day spaceflight. The mission aimed to assess how the human body functions in weightlessness and to evaluate the endurance of the Vostok 3KA spacecraft during extended flights. Nikolayev completed 64 orbits of Earth over the course of August 11–15, 1962—a milestone that NASA would not achieve until the Gemini program in 1965-1966. On August 12, Pavel Popovich was launched on Vostok 4, completing 48 Earth orbits. The two capsules followed trajectories that brought them within approximately 6.5 km (4.0 mi) of each other, and they communicated via radio, marking the first ship-to-ship communications in space. These missions were significant as they represented the first instance of multiple crewed spacecraft in orbit simultaneously, allowing Soviet mission controllers to learn how to manage such scenarios.
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| A Vostok 3 launch cover featuring a special Baku postmark dated August 11, 1962. |
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| A Vostok 3 launch cover featuring a Penza postmark dated August 11, 1962. |
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| A postcard featuring a portrait of Andrian Nikolayev, canceled with a Vostok 3 stamp depicting him. |
(Reference from
Vostok 3 and 4)
