Yesterday (April 12) was the 50th anniversary of man’s first flight in space. It was a truly important day and Sotheby’s knew how to make the best of it: they held a special auction in New York, selling the Vostok 3KA-2 capsule that half a century ago safely transported a life-sized human dummy and a dog named Zvezdochka into space and back on Earth. An almost identical capsule later took Yuri Gagarin on a similar journey on April 12, 1961.
Russian businessman Evgeny Yurchenko bought the capsule with the sole purpose of bringing it back to its homeland and then finding a proper museum to give it to. Pre-sale estimates were between $2 million and $10 million, and they were pretty accurate, as Yurchenko shelled out $2.88 million on the spacecraft.
