First Orbit
Encyclopedia
First Orbit is a feature-length, experimental documentary film about Vostok 1
, the first manned space flight around the Earth
. By matching the orbit of the International Space Station
to that of Vostok 1 as closely as possible, in terms of ground path and time of day, documentary filmmaker Christopher Riley
and European Space Agency
astronaut Paolo Nespoli were able to film the view that Yuri Gagarin
saw on his pioneering orbital space flight. This new footage was cut together with the original Vostok 1 mission audio recordings sourced from the Russian State Archive of Scientific and
Technical Documentation. The film features an original musical score by composer Philip Sheppard.
The International Space Station (ISS) orbits the Earth once every 90 minutes, but it does not always follow the same route that Gagarin took. To find out when filming opportunities might occur, the European Space Agency (ESA) teamed Chris up with German orbital mechanical engineer, Gerald Ziegler. Ziegler discovered that the ISS covered similar ground to Gagarin's Vostok 1 spaceship approximately every week. To complicate things further, the filmmakers needed to film at exactly the same time of day that Gagarin made his flight: passing over Gagarin’s launch site, near the Aral Sea, at 06:07 UT and into the nightside of Earth over the Pacific Ocean at 06:37, before emerging into sunlight again over the Southern Atlantic at 07:10 UT and passing across the African continent and the Middle East, returning to the ground at 07:55 UT, just north of the Caspian Sea.
Further calculations confirmed that opportunities to film this trajectory, with the correct sun angles, at this exact time of day, only came around once every six weeks. According to Riley, the second challenge was fitting these filming opportunities into crew time on board the space station. "The astronauts have a busy schedule; conducting a packed programme of experiments, Earth observations and activities like sleep, exercise and meal times. This meant that accommodating the extra filming request for First Orbit was yet another challenge for the ESA mission directors," he told BBC news in a March 2011 interview. On the final flight path back towards Gagarin's landing site, the scenes shot for First Orbit are slightly to the east of the original Vostok 1 trajectory. Because the vantage point is so high, the vista was similar to that of Gagarin's vantage point.
Mission directors Roland Luettgens and Giovanni Gravili worked closely with the team to turn the filming opportunities into precise technical notes which translated Chris's camera directions into instructions for the crew. After a brief test shoot in November 2010, conducted by NASA's Expedition 25
astronaut Doug Wheelock, European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli filmed most of the footage for the project in early January 2011. This new footage showed the Earth as Gagarin would have seen it almost exactly fifty years before. The film does have a digital recreation of the moon, though. When Gagarin flew into the nightside of the Earth on April 12, 1961, there was a crescent moon and, according to his autobiography, Road to the Stars, Gagarin tried looking for the moon out of curiosity, to see what it looked like from space. Unfortunately, it was not in his field of view. The filmmakers added the moon into the scene as a tribute.
. Since that time, Philip had worked on a new suite of music inspired by space flight, which he donated to this new film project.
Coincidentally, the music in the film was taken onboard the ISS by NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman
before it was used in the film. Catherine Coleman flew to the ISS with astronaut and First Orbit cameraman Paolo Nespoli without either of them knowing about the others connection to the film project.
and the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia
TASS. The Russian recordings in the film are subtitled in English.
premiere on April 12, 2011. It has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution license
. On the day of release the film was viewed 1.3 million times within 24 hours and 2.3 million times within 48 hours. In addition to this online première the film opened on over 1600 screens around the world in more than 130 countries, including UNESCO HQ in Paris, Boeing HQ in Seattle, and the European Space Agency’s Columbus Control Centre near Munich.
Vostok 1
Vostok 1 was the first spaceflight in the Vostok program and the first human spaceflight in history. The Vostok 3KA spacecraft was launched on April 12, 1961. The flight took Yuri Gagarin, a cosmonaut from the Soviet Union, into space. The flight marked the first time that a human entered outer...
, the first manned space flight around the Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
. By matching the orbit of the International Space Station
International Space Station
The International Space Station is a habitable, artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. The ISS follows the Salyut, Almaz, Cosmos, Skylab, and Mir space stations, as the 11th space station launched, not including the Genesis I and II prototypes...
to that of Vostok 1 as closely as possible, in terms of ground path and time of day, documentary filmmaker Christopher Riley
Christopher Riley
Christopher Riley is a British writer, broadcaster and film maker specialising in the history of science. He has a PhD from Imperial College, University of London where he pioneered the use of digital elevation models in the study of mountain range geomorphology and evolution...
and European Space Agency
European Space Agency
The European Space Agency , established in 1975, is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the exploration of space, currently with 18 member states...
astronaut Paolo Nespoli were able to film the view that Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961....
saw on his pioneering orbital space flight. This new footage was cut together with the original Vostok 1 mission audio recordings sourced from the Russian State Archive of Scientific and
Technical Documentation. The film features an original musical score by composer Philip Sheppard.
Production
Although the film archive of Gagarin’s training, preparations, and subsequent world tour is extensive, footage of the actual Vostok 1 flight hardly exists. In 2010 Riley came up with the idea to film Yuri’s original view of the Earth from space through the International Space Station's new giant-windowed cupola.The International Space Station (ISS) orbits the Earth once every 90 minutes, but it does not always follow the same route that Gagarin took. To find out when filming opportunities might occur, the European Space Agency (ESA) teamed Chris up with German orbital mechanical engineer, Gerald Ziegler. Ziegler discovered that the ISS covered similar ground to Gagarin's Vostok 1 spaceship approximately every week. To complicate things further, the filmmakers needed to film at exactly the same time of day that Gagarin made his flight: passing over Gagarin’s launch site, near the Aral Sea, at 06:07 UT and into the nightside of Earth over the Pacific Ocean at 06:37, before emerging into sunlight again over the Southern Atlantic at 07:10 UT and passing across the African continent and the Middle East, returning to the ground at 07:55 UT, just north of the Caspian Sea.
Further calculations confirmed that opportunities to film this trajectory, with the correct sun angles, at this exact time of day, only came around once every six weeks. According to Riley, the second challenge was fitting these filming opportunities into crew time on board the space station. "The astronauts have a busy schedule; conducting a packed programme of experiments, Earth observations and activities like sleep, exercise and meal times. This meant that accommodating the extra filming request for First Orbit was yet another challenge for the ESA mission directors," he told BBC news in a March 2011 interview. On the final flight path back towards Gagarin's landing site, the scenes shot for First Orbit are slightly to the east of the original Vostok 1 trajectory. Because the vantage point is so high, the vista was similar to that of Gagarin's vantage point.
Mission directors Roland Luettgens and Giovanni Gravili worked closely with the team to turn the filming opportunities into precise technical notes which translated Chris's camera directions into instructions for the crew. After a brief test shoot in November 2010, conducted by NASA's Expedition 25
Expedition 25
Expedition 25 was the twenty-fifth long-duration mission to the International Space Station . Expedition 25 began with the Soyuz TMA-18 undocking on 25 September 2010...
astronaut Doug Wheelock, European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli filmed most of the footage for the project in early January 2011. This new footage showed the Earth as Gagarin would have seen it almost exactly fifty years before. The film does have a digital recreation of the moon, though. When Gagarin flew into the nightside of the Earth on April 12, 1961, there was a crescent moon and, according to his autobiography, Road to the Stars, Gagarin tried looking for the moon out of curiosity, to see what it looked like from space. Unfortunately, it was not in his field of view. The filmmakers added the moon into the scene as a tribute.
Music
The music in First Orbit was composed by Philip Sheppard and derives from his album Cloud Songs. Riley first worked with Philip in 2006 on the Sundance award-winning feature documentary film, In the Shadow of the MoonIn the Shadow of the Moon
In the Shadow of the Moon is a 2006 British documentary film about the United States' manned missions to the Moon. It premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Audience Award. In March 2008, it was the first film to win the Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Best Film...
. Since that time, Philip had worked on a new suite of music inspired by space flight, which he donated to this new film project.
Coincidentally, the music in the film was taken onboard the ISS by NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman
Catherine Coleman
Catherine Grace "Cady" Coleman is an American chemist, a former United States Air Force officer, and a current NASA astronaut...
before it was used in the film. Catherine Coleman flew to the ISS with astronaut and First Orbit cameraman Paolo Nespoli without either of them knowing about the others connection to the film project.
Archive Audio
The producers sourced Gagarin's original mission audio for First Orbit from the Russian State Archive. These historic recordings principally document the conversation between Yuri Gagarin on board Vostok 1 and Sergei Korolev on the ground. To the producer's knowledge, it is the first time that such complete accounts of the flight have been heard outside Russia. Additional archive audio in the film comes from a Radio Moscow report broadcast during the flight and news bulletins from the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
and the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia
Information Telegraph Agency of Russia
The Information Telegraph Agency of Russia , is the major news agency of Russia. It is headquartered in Moscow.- History :Its origin is in a letter sent by Finance Minister Vladimir Kokovtsov to foreign minister in March 1904 writing that "our trade and industrial circles, as well as the Finance...
TASS. The Russian recordings in the film are subtitled in English.
Global distribution
The finished film was streamed through the website www.firstorbit.org in a global YouTubeYouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
premiere on April 12, 2011. It has been released under the Creative Commons Attribution license
Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...
. On the day of release the film was viewed 1.3 million times within 24 hours and 2.3 million times within 48 hours. In addition to this online première the film opened on over 1600 screens around the world in more than 130 countries, including UNESCO HQ in Paris, Boeing HQ in Seattle, and the European Space Agency’s Columbus Control Centre near Munich.