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Apparent Error. If any Soviet spacecraft has gone astray and landed on an ocean or other inhospitable spot, the world has not been told about it. Last week's landing near Perm was the first apparent error. A late report said that Colonel Belyayev fired his retrorockets while over Africa to check the ship's speed and start it curving down toward the earth. He was said to be the first Soviet spaceman to take over the landing controls himself, but whether this action was planned or was forced by some failure of the automatic-landing system was not made clear.
The ship was said to have made a soft touchdown on deep snow, with the aid of parachutes. Newspapers described its flaming descent through the atmosphere and discussed the loss of radio contact when an antenna burned off. But all this is normal. It was the long silence after landing that was ominous. Then word came that the cosmonauts were safe; Yuri Gagarin, Russia's space pioneer, talked to them by telephone and reported that "they are completely healthy." Whatever had gone wrong on the last, dangerous trajectory that led back to earth had apparently not detracted from the overall accomplishment of that spectacular flight.