Soyuz 9 - 424 Hour Space Flight - 1st game played in space
06/01/1970 AD launched
The two-man crew broke the five-year-old space endurance record held by Gemini 7, with their nearly 18-day flight. The mission paved the way for the Salyut space station missions, investigating the effects of long-term weightlessness on crew, and evaluating the work that the cosmonauts could do in orbit, individually and as a team.
During the mission, the two cosmonauts played a game of chess against a pair of opponents on Earth: head of cosmonauts Nikolai Kamanin and fellow cosmonaut Viktor Gorbatko. It was the first documented game played by humans while in space.
It was a consultation game, with the two cosmonauts playing as White and jointly deciding each move, while the two players on Earth did likewise as Black. The set used aboard Soyuz 9 had pegs and grooves to keep the pieces in place and did not include magnets, which might have interfered with the spacecraft's systems.
The game concluded as a draw.
Lattitude: 45.965° N
Longitude: 63.305° E
Region: Russia and Eastern Bloc
Modern Day Kazakhstan
Subjects Who or What launched?
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Soviet Union (USSR) The Union of Soviet ...
Objects To Whom or What was launched?
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Soyuz rocket The rocket that facilita... -
Andriyan Nikolayev Third Soviet cosmonaut t...
Events in 1970 MORE
