Soviet space plans for the next several months were ambitious and included Vostok missions, planetary probes, military reconnaissance, and scientific satellites but the first were given priority.

There was still wrangling over the exact design of the Vostok ejector seat and it was eventually decided to eject the cosmonaut at a relatively low altitude instead of an enclosed capsule like had been originally envisioned.

Korabl-Sputnik 3 was launched at 07:30:04 UTC on 1 December 1960, atop a Vostok-L carrier rocket flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

The flight control system missed the required time marker for the atmospheric entry measured by a G-force sensor, activating the APO and blowing the descent module to pieces.

It began to fall back to Earth and the increasing heat of reentry triggered the separation sequence between the instrument and descent modules.

The descent module was tracked to a reentry point somewhere in north central Siberia some 3,000 kilometers (1,868 miles) downrange from the Baikonur launch complex.

Engineer Fedor Vostokov was assigned to lead the recovery team due to his expertise in designing the cabin that housed the dogs.

It had to fly the capsule 600 kilometers (372 miles) to Turukhansk to be picked up by an An-12 transport aircraft (the An-12 could not land near Tura due to the lack of a suitable runway there).

Postflight analysis found that the Blok E stage's gas generator had failed at T+425 seconds and resulted in premature engine shutdown.