Vostok 3 (,
Orient 3 or
East 3) was a spaceflight of the
Soviet space program intended to determine the ability of the human body to function in conditions of weightlessness and test the endurance of the
Vostok 3KA spacecraft over longer flights. Cosmonaut
Andriyan Nikolayev orbited the Earth 64 times over nearly four days in space, August 11–15, 1962, a feat which would not be matched by
NASA until the
Gemini program (1965–1966).