Vostok Zero, the first human spaceflight, was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Soviet Union on 1st April 1961, piloted by Colonel Ivan Ivanovich – a cosmonaut whose name has been entirely expurgated from even the most restricted secret records of the Soviet Space Programme. During the launch, the Vostok-K carrier rocket, which had only ever been intended to place the spacecraft into Earth orbit, catastrophically malfunctioned, and instead sent Ivanovich hurtling off on a trajectory which would eventually carry him far beyond our solar system, into deep space, with no hope of return. The very existence of the ill-fated flight of the first man in space has of course never been officially acknowledged by either the Soviet or Russian authorities – and yet these remarkable recordings of Ivanovich’s final transmission, received just before radio contact with Vostok Zero was lost forever, stand as testament to his untold story. ✪
