Launch of a two-man crew

At 07:00 UTC Voskhod 2 lifted off from Baikonur with Pavel Belyayev and Alexei Leonov aboard. The mission had a single, historic goal: to get a human outside the ship into open space for the first time.

Attached to the side of the ship was the inflatable Volga airlock. A rigid airlock would not fit under the launch vehicle's fairing, so the engineers chose a fabric cylinder that was pressurised in orbit and meant to be jettisoned after use.