Which of the Soviet cosmonauts died during landing. Lost in space

In the space thriller "" viewers are faced with the terrifying prospect of an astronaut flying in a vacuum. The film opened October with a record-breaking $55.6 million in weekend grosses. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts find themselves suspended in nowhere after space debris (which is in orbit) crashes their craft. .

Gravity's gripping portrayal of space disaster may be fictional, but the potential for death and destruction in space is far from being fully exploited, says Allan J. McDonald, a NASA engineer.

"It's an extremely dangerous occupation," McDonald says.

Here is the biggest real disaster in the history of space exploration. Including those similar to the one in Gravity. Everything as you like: with victims, with crushed metal and tears of loved ones and relatives. Just not in Hollywood.

Valentina Nikolaeva (left), a cosmonaut of her own accord, joins the crowd on Red Square and greets three new Russian cosmonauts with applause on October 19, 1964. From left to right: Boris Egorov, Konstantin Feoktistov and Vladimir Komarov.

The first fatal accident in space was the share of the Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov: the Soyuz-1 capsule fell on Russian soil in 1967. KGB sources (Starman, 2011, Walker & Co.) say Komarov and others knew the capsule would crash, but the Soviet leadership ignored their warnings.

Various points of view agree that a malfunctioning parachute was the cause of the accident. Audio recordings of the astronaut's last conversations with ground control indicate that the astronaut "violently yelled" at the engineers, whom he blamed for the malfunction of the spacecraft.

Death in space

Soyuz-11 cosmonauts Viktor Patsaev, Georgy Dobrovolsky and Vladislav Volkov are being tested on a flight simulator. NASA

The Soviet space program was the first (and so far only) to face death in space in 1971, when cosmonauts Georgy Dobrovolsky, Viktor Patsaev, and Vladislav Volkov died while returning to Earth from the Salyut-1 space station. Their Soyuz-11 made a perfect textbook landing in 1971. Therefore, the rescue team was surprised to find three people dead, sitting on couches, with dark blue spots on their faces and blood dripping from their noses and ears.

The investigation showed that the ventilation valve burst, and the astronauts suffocated. The fall in pressure doomed the crew to death by the vacuum of space - and they became the only human beings ever to face such a fate. People died within seconds of a valve rupture that occurred at an altitude of 168 kilometers, and became the first and so far the last astronauts to die in space. Since the capsule was moving on an automatic landing program, the ship was able to land without living pilots.

The Challenger disaster

Challenger team members: astronauts Michael J. Smith, Francis R. Scobie and Ronald E. McNair, Allison S. Onizuka, loading specialists Sharon Crystal McAuliffe and Gregory Jarvis, and Judith A. Resnick

NASA ended the Apollo era without a fatal accident during space missions. The streak of success came to an abrupt end on January 28, 1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in front of numerous television viewers shortly after liftoff. The launch attracted a lot of attention because it was the first time a teacher had gone into orbit. By promising to give lessons from space, Christa McAuliffe attracted a million-strong audience of schoolchildren.

The disaster traumatized the nation, according to James Hansen, a space historian at Auber University.

"That's what makes the Challenger unique," he said. - “We saw it. We have seen it continue to happen."

A noisy investigation revealed that the O-ring (O-ring) had deteriorated due to the low temperature on launch day. NASA knew this could happen. The accident led to technical and cultural changes at the agency and put the shuttle program on hold until 1988.

Columbia space shuttle tragedy

Space shuttle Columbia re-entered the atmosphere and broke up

Seventeen years after the Challenger tragedy, the shuttle program faced another loss when the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart during re-entry on February 1, 2003, at the end of the STS-107 mission.

The investigation showed that the reason for the destruction of the shuttle was a piece of thermal insulation of the oxygen tank, which damaged the thermal insulation of the wing during launch. The seven crew members may have survived the first damage to the shuttle, but quickly lost consciousness and died as the shuttle continued to crash around them. The crash of the Columbia shuttle, according to McDonald, unfortunately repeats the mistakes of the Challenger era, and some trifle is left without attention.

The following year, President George W. Bush announced the shutdown of the shuttle program.

The fire of Apollo 1

Astronauts (left to right) Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee pose in front of Launch Complex 34

Although not a single astronaut was lost in space during the Apollo mission, two fatal incidents occurred during pre-flight preparations. Apollo 1 astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White II, and Roger Chaffee died in a "non-hazardous" command module ground test on January 27, 1967. A fire broke out in the cabin and three astronauts suffocated before their bodies were engulfed in flames.

The investigation revealed several errors, including the use of pure oxygen in the cockpit, flammable Velcro straps, and an inward-opening hatch that left the crew trapped. Prior to the test, the astronauts expressed concern about the cockpit and posed in front of the vehicle.

As a result of the accident, Congress conducted investigations that could have canceled the Apollo program but ultimately led to design and procedural changes that would benefit future missions, Hansen said.

"If the fire hadn't happened, many say we wouldn't have reached the Moon," he says.

Apollo 13: "Houston, we have a problem"

Astronaut John L. Swigert, Jr., Apollo 13 Command Module Pilot, holds a quick-build tool that the Apollo 13 astronauts built to use the lithium hydroxide canisters in the command module to purge carbon dioxide from the Lunar Module. gas

The Apollo program owes its success, in part, to the daring actions that averted catastrophes. In 1966, the agency successfully docked the Gemini 8 spacecraft to a target transport, but the Gemini went into an uncontrollable spin. A rotation speed of one revolution per second could have caused astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott to lose consciousness. Luckily, Armstrong corrected the situation by shutting down the failed main engine and taking control of the reentry engines.

In 1995, a film called Apollo 13 was released, which was based on a real case on the spacecraft of the same name, which could leave astronauts in a vacuum. An oxygen tank exploded, damaging the service module and making it impossible to land on the moon. To get home, the astronauts used the principle of a slingshot, dispersing the ship with the help of the moon's gravity and directing it towards the Earth. After the explosion, astronaut Jack Swigert radioed Mission Control "Houston, we had a problem." In the film, the catchphrase goes to Jim Lowell, played by Tom Hanks, and sounds in a slightly modified version: "Houston, we have a problem."

Lightning and wolves

A bright sun shines over the Apollo 12 base on the Moon's surface. One of the astronauts walks away from the Intrepid lunar module

Both NASA and the USSR/Russia's space programs have experienced several interesting, though not catastrophic, developments. In 1969, lightning struck the same spacecraft twice, 36 and 52 seconds after the launch of Apollo 12. The mission went smoothly.

Due to a 46-second delay caused by the cramped cabin, cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Pavel Belyaev on the Voskhod-2 spacecraft slightly missed the re-entry point into the dense atmosphere. The device crashed into the forests of the Upper Kama region, teeming with wolves and bears. Leonov and Belyaev spent the night nearly freezing, clutching their pistols in case they were attacked (which never happened).

"What if?". Nixon's Apollo 11 speech

Collage shot of President Richard M. Nixon calling and astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin after their legendary moon landing on July 20, 1969

Perhaps the most stunning cosmic disasters have never happened - except in the minds of people carefully planning them. History remembers the potential disaster thanks to a speech written for President Richard Nixon in case Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong get stranded on the Moon during the first manned moon landing.

The text reads: "It is destined by fate that the men who set off peacefully to explore the moon will rest in peace on the moon."

If that were to happen, the future of spaceflight and public perception could be very different from what it is today, says Hansen.

“If we, on Earth, thought about dead bodies on the surface of the moon… the ghost of it would haunt us. Who knows, maybe this led to the closure of the space program.”

Well, it's hard to say at what cost NASA would have paid missions to Venus and Mars.

On June 30, 1971, the crew of the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz-11 died while returning to Earth.

Black line

Crews for "Salute"

Forced replacement

“If this is compatibility, then what is incompatibility?”

“Communication ends. Happily!"

"The outcome of the flight is the most difficult"

Depressurization

The crew fought to the end, but had no chance of salvation

After the Soyuz-11, the astronauts were again dressed in spacesuits

The Soviet manned space program, which began with triumphs, began to falter in the second half of the 1960s. Wounded by failures, the Americans threw huge resources into competition with the Russians and began to outstrip the Soviet Union.

In January 1966, he died Sergei Korolev, the man who was the main engine of the Soviet space program. In April 1967, an astronaut died during a test flight of the new Soyuz spacecraft. Vladimir Komarov. On March 27, 1968, the first cosmonaut of the Earth died during a training flight on an airplane. Yuri Gagarin. Sergei Korolev's latest project, the N-1 lunar rocket, suffered one setback after another during tests.

The astronauts involved in the manned "lunar program" wrote letters to the Central Committee of the CPSU with a request to allow them to fly under their own responsibility, despite the high probability of a catastrophe. However, the political leadership of the country did not want to take such risks. The Americans were the first to land on the moon, and the Soviet "lunar program" was curtailed.

The participants in the failed lunar exploration were transferred to another project - a flight to the world's first manned orbital station. A manned laboratory in orbit was supposed to allow the Soviet Union to at least partially compensate for the defeat on the Moon.

Crews for "Salute"

In about four months that the first station could work in orbit, it was planned to send three expeditions to it. Crew number one included Georgy Shonin, Alexey Eliseev and Nikolai Rukavishnikov, the second crew was Alexey Leonov, Valery Kubasov, Petr Kolodin, crew number three - Vladimir Shatalov, Vladislav Volkov, Victor Patsaev. There was also a fourth, reserve crew, consisting of George Dobrovolsky, Vitaly Sevastyanov and Anatoly Voronov.

The commander of crew number four, Georgy Dobrovolsky, seemed to have no chance of getting to the first station, called "Salyut", there was no chance. But fate had a different opinion on this matter.

Georgy Shonin grossly violated the regime, and the chief curator of the detachment of Soviet cosmonauts, General Nikolai Kamanin removed him from further training. Vladimir Shatalov was transferred to Shonin's place, Georgy Dobrovolsky himself replaced him, and they introduced Alexey Gubarev.

Soyuz-10 returned safely to Earth, after which the engineers began to hastily refine the Soyuz-11 docking units.

Forced replacement

A new attempt to conquer the Salyut was to be made by a crew consisting of Alexei Leonov, Valery Kubasov and Pyotr Kolodin. The start of their expedition was scheduled for June 6, 1971.

On the wires to Baikonur, the plate, which Leonov threw on the ground for good luck, did not break. The awkwardness was hushed up, but the bad premonitions remained.

By tradition, two crews flew to the cosmodrome - the main and backup. Understudies were Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsaev.

SOYUZ-11"Soyuz-11" on the launch pad. Photo: RIA Novosti / Alexander Mokletsov

It was a formality, because until that moment no one had made last-minute substitutions.

But three days before the start, doctors found a blackout in Valery Kubasov's lungs, which they considered the initial stage of tuberculosis. The verdict was categorical - he could not go on a flight.

The State Commission decided: what to do? The commander of the main crew, Alexei Leonov, insisted that if Kubasov could not fly, then he should be replaced by an understudy flight engineer, Vladislav Volkov.

Most experts, however, believed that in such conditions it is necessary to replace the entire crew. The crew of understudies also opposed the partial replacement. General Kamanin wrote in his diaries that the situation had escalated in earnest. Two crews usually went to the traditional pre-flight rally. After the commission approved the replacement, and Dobrovolsky's crew became the main one, Valery Kubasov said that he would not go to the rally: "I'm not flying, what should I do there?" Nevertheless, Kubasov appeared at the rally, but tension was in the air.

Soviet cosmonauts (from left to right) Vladislav Volkov, Georgy Dobrovolsky and Viktor Patsayev at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Photo: RIA Novosti / Alexander Mokletsov

“If this is compatibility, then what is incompatibility?”

Journalist Yaroslav Golovanov, who wrote a lot on the space theme, recalled what was happening these days at Baikonur: “Leonov tore and threw ... poor Valery (Kubasov) did not understand anything at all: he felt absolutely healthy ... At night he came to the hotel Petya Kolodin, drunk and completely drooping. He told me: "Slava, understand, I will never fly into space...". Kolodin, by the way, was not mistaken - he never went into space.

On June 6, 1971, Soyuz-11 with a crew of Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsaev successfully launched from Baikonur. The ship docked with Salyut, the astronauts boarded the station, and the expedition began.

Flight engineer Vladislav Volkov, who had space flight experience behind him, often tried to take the initiative, which did not like the specialists on Earth, and even his crewmates.

On the 11th day of the expedition, a fire broke out on board, and there was a question of an emergency leaving the station, but the crew still managed to cope with the situation.

General Kamanin wrote in his diary: “At eight in the morning, Dobrovolsky and Patsaev were still sleeping, Volkov got in touch, who yesterday, according to Bykovsky’s report, was the most nervous and“ yakal ”too much (“I decided ...”, “I did ..." etc). On behalf of Mishin, he was given an instruction: “Everything is decided by the crew commander, follow his orders,” to which Volkov replied: “We decide everything by the crew. We'll figure out how to do it ourselves."

“Communication ends. Happily!"

Despite all the difficulties, the difficult situation, the Soyuz-11 crew completed the flight program in full. On June 29, the astronauts were supposed to undock from Salyut and return to Earth.

After the return of the Soyuz-11, the next expedition was to go to the station in order to consolidate the successes achieved and continue the experiments.

But before undocking with Salyut, a new problem arose. The crew had to close the passage hatch in the descent vehicle. But the banner "Hatch open" on the control panel continued to glow. Several attempts to open and close the hatch yielded nothing. The astronauts were in great tension. Earth advised to put a piece of insulation under the limit switch of the sensor. This happened repeatedly during the tests. The hatch was closed again. To the delight of the crew, the banner went out. Relieve pressure in the domestic compartment. According to the readings of the instruments, we were convinced that the air from the descent vehicle does not escape and its tightness is normal. After that, Soyuz-11 successfully undocked from the station.

At 0:16 on June 30, General Kamanin contacted the crew, reporting the landing conditions, and ending with the phrase: “See you soon on Earth!”

“Understood, landing conditions are excellent. Everything is in order on board, the crew is in excellent health. Thank you for your care and good wishes,” Georgy Dobrovolsky answered from orbit.

Here is a recording of the last negotiations of the Earth with the Soyuz-11 crew:

Zarya (Mission Control Center): How is the orientation going?

"Yantar-2" (Vladislav Volkov): We saw the Earth, we saw it!

Zarya: Okay, take your time.

"Yantar-2": "Dawn", I am "Yantar-2". Orientation started. To the right is rain.

"Yantar-2": Great flies, beautiful!

"Yantar-3" (Viktor Patsaev): "Dawn", I'm the third. I can see the horizon at the bottom of the porthole.

"Dawn": "Amber", once again I remind you of the orientation - zero - one hundred and eighty degrees.

"Yantar-2": Zero - one hundred and eighty degrees.

"Dawn": Correctly understood.

"Yantar-2": The banner "Descent" is on.

Zarya: Let it burn. Everything is great. Burns correctly. The connection ends. Happily!"

"The outcome of the flight is the most difficult"

At 1:35 Moscow time, after the orientation of the Soyuz, the braking propulsion system was turned on. Having worked out the estimated time and losing speed, the ship began to deorbit.

During the passage of dense layers of the atmosphere, there is no communication with the crew, it should appear again after the parachute of the descent vehicle opens, due to the antenna on the parachute line.

At 2:05 a.m., a report was received from the Air Force command post: "The crews of the Il-14 aircraft and the Mi-8 helicopter see the Soyuz-11 spacecraft descending by parachute." At 02:17 the descent vehicle landed. Almost at the same time, four helicopters of the search group landed with him.

Doctor Anatoly Lebedev, who was part of the search group, recalled that he was embarrassed by the silence of the crew on the radio. The helicopter pilots were actively communicating while the descent vehicle was landing, and the astronauts were not going on the air. But this was attributed to the failure of the antenna.

When the crew was removed from the descent vehicle, the doctors could not understand what had happened. It seemed that the astronauts simply lost consciousness. But upon a cursory examination, it became clear that everything was much more serious. Six doctors started artificial respiration, chest compressions.

Minutes passed, the commander of the search group, General Goreglyad demanded an answer from the doctors, but they continued to try to bring the crew back to life. Finally, Lebedev replied: "Tell me that the crew landed without signs of life." This wording is included in all official documents.

Doctors continued resuscitation until absolute signs of death appeared. But their desperate efforts could not change anything.

At first, the Mission Control Center was informed that "the outcome of the space flight is the most difficult." And then, having already abandoned some kind of conspiracy, they reported: "The entire crew died."

Depressurization

It was a terrible shock for the whole country. At parting in Moscow, the comrades of the cosmonauts who died in the detachment cried and said: “Now we are already burying whole crews!” It seemed that the Soviet space program had finally failed.

Specialists, however, even at such a moment had to work. What happened in those moments when there was no communication with the astronauts? What killed the Soyuz-11 crew?

The word "depressurization" sounded almost immediately. They remembered the emergency situation with the hatch and carried out a leak test. But its results showed that the hatch is reliable, it has nothing to do with it.

But it really was a matter of depressurization. An analysis of the recordings of the autonomous recorder of onboard measurements "Mir", a kind of "black box" of the spacecraft showed: from the moment the compartments were separated at an altitude of more than 150 km, the pressure in the descent vehicle began to decrease sharply, and within 115 seconds it dropped to 50 millimeters of mercury.

These indicators indicated the destruction of one of the ventilation valves, which is provided in case the ship makes a landing on the water or lands hatch down. The supply of life support system resources is limited, and so that the astronauts do not experience a lack of oxygen, the valve "connected" the ship to the atmosphere. It was supposed to work during normal landing only at an altitude of 4 km, but it happened at an altitude of 150 km, in a vacuum.

The forensic medical examination showed traces of cerebral hemorrhage, blood in the lungs, damage to the eardrums and the release of nitrogen from the blood among the crew members.

From the report of the medical service: “50 seconds after separation, Patsaev had a respiratory rate of 42 per minute, which is typical for acute oxygen starvation. Dobrovolsky's pulse drops rapidly, breathing stops by this time. This is the initial period of death. At the 110th second after the separation, neither pulse nor breathing is recorded in all three. We believe that death occurred 120 seconds after the separation.

The crew fought to the end, but had no chance of salvation

The hole in the valve through which the air escaped was no more than 20 mm, and, as some engineers stated, it could "just be plugged with a finger." However, this advice was practically impossible to implement. Immediately after the depressurization, a fog formed in the cabin, a terrible whistle of escaping air sounded. In just a few seconds, the astronauts, due to acute decompression sickness, began to experience terrible pains throughout their bodies, and then they found themselves in complete silence due to bursting eardrums.

On Earth, Alexei Leonov and Nikolai Rukavishnikov participated in an experiment, trying to determine how long it takes to close the valve. The cosmonauts, who knew where trouble would come from, who were ready for it and were not in real danger, needed much more time than the Soyuz-11 crew had. Doctors believe that consciousness in such conditions began to fade after about 20 seconds. However, the safety valve was partially closed. Someone from the crew began to rotate it, but lost consciousness.

After the Soyuz-11, the astronauts were again dressed in spacesuits

The reason for the abnormal opening of the valve was considered a defect in the manufacture of this system. Even the KGB got involved in the case, seeing a possible sabotage. But no saboteurs were found, and besides, it was not possible to repeat the situation of abnormal opening of the valve on Earth. As a result, this version was left final due to the lack of a more reliable one.

Spacesuits could have saved the cosmonauts, but on the personal instructions of Sergei Korolev, their use was discontinued starting with Voskhod-1, when this was done to save space in the cabin. After the Soyuz-11 disaster, a controversy unfolded between the military and engineers - the former insisted on the return of spacesuits, and the latter argued that this emergency was an exceptional case, while the introduction of spacesuits would drastically reduce the possibilities for delivering payload and increasing the number of crew members.

The victory in the discussion was with the military, and, starting from the Soyuz-12 flight, Russian cosmonauts fly only in spacesuits.

The ashes of Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsaev were buried in the Kremlin wall. The program of manned flights to the Salyut-1 station was curtailed.

The next manned flight to the USSR took place more than two years later. Vasily Lazarev and Oleg Makarov new spacesuits were tested on Soyuz-12.

The failures of the late 1960s and early 1970s did not become fatal for the Soviet space program. By the 1980s, the space exploration program with the help of orbital stations again brought the Soviet Union to the world leaders. During the flights, there were emergency situations and serious accidents, but people and equipment turned out to be on top. Since June 30, 1971, there have been no accidents with human casualties in the domestic cosmonautics.

P.S. The diagnosis of tuberculosis made by cosmonaut Valery Kubasov turned out to be erroneous. Darkening in the lungs was a reaction to the flowering of plants, and soon disappeared. Kubasov, together with Alexei Leonov, participated in a joint flight with American astronauts under the Soyuz-Apollo program, as well as in a flight with the first Hungarian cosmonaut Bertalan Farkas.

Almost 33 years ago, on January 28, 1986, one of the first major disasters in the history of manned space flights occurred - the crash of the Challenger shuttle during launch (before that, 3 Soviet cosmonauts died in 1971 during the landing of Soyuz-11 - Hi-Tech) ). On board were military pilots Francis Scooby and Michael Smith, engineers Allison Onizuka and Gregory Jervis, physicist Ronald McNair, astronaut Judith Resnick and teacher Krista McAuliffe. Each of the 73 seconds of mission shuttle flight STS-51L has been reviewed numerous times by experts. The exact cause of the death of the astronauts has remained a mystery, but experts are inclined to believe that the astronauts were still alive when the cabin hit the surface of the ocean at a speed of more than 320 km / h. Their death was a tragedy not only for the United States, but for the whole world. Moreover, it destroyed the faith of hundreds of people in the inviolability and safety of space missions.

On January 28, 1986, US President Ronald Reagan interrupted his message to Congress to announce to American citizens that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded in the atmosphere. The entire country was deeply affected by the catastrophe. Reagan expressed his condolences to the relatives of the victims, but nevertheless noted that such expeditions and discoveries cannot be imagined without significant mortal risks for the testers. So what happened anyway?

The crew of the Challenger

The Challenger was supposed to take off on January 24, 1986, but due to a dust storm at the Senegalese airport, at the site of a possible emergency landing, the flight was postponed.

During the morning check of the status of the shuttle, the crawlers could not help but notice the icicles that hung from the bottom. On the night of January 27-28, the temperature dropped to -2 °C. This fact could not go unnoticed by the developers of solid-propellant boosters for the shuttle. In such climatic conditions, the fiber of the intersectional seals lost its elasticity and could not provide sufficient tightness at the junctions of the ship sections. The specialists immediately reported their concerns to NASA.

Icicles on the bottom of the shuttle on the day of the crash

On the night of January 28, under pressure from representatives of the Marshall Center, the management of Morton Thiokol gave guarantees that damage to the seals was no more critical than during previous flights. Such frivolity not only cost the lives of seven astronauts, the total destruction of the ship and the collapse of the mission, the launch of which cost $ 1.3 billion, but also led to the freezing of the Space Shuttle program for a long three years. The commission, which studied all the materials related to the crash, decided that the main cause of the disaster should be considered "deficiencies in NASA's corporate culture and decision-making procedure."

Almost immediately after the launch, gray smoke appeared from the junction of the tail and second sections of the right solid rocket booster of the space system due to the formed ice crust. At the 59th second, at full speed, the shuttle had a fiery tail. Both the flight commander and mission control had time to take emergency action. But Francis Scooby, the commander of the ship, could not notice and assess the danger in time, and the flight leaders, most likely, were simply afraid to take full responsibility. At the 65th second of the flight, a fuel leak began due to the ignition of the fuel tank. At the 73rd second of the flight, the lower mount of the right booster came off and, tilting, the hull itself tore off the right wing of the Challenger and pierced the oxygen tank. This led to an explosion.

Space Shuttle Challenger

The components of liquid hydrogen and oxygen mixed and ignited, creating a ball of flame in the air. The shuttle itself was still gaining altitude, but no longer succumbed to control. When the fuel tank collapsed, the shuttle could no longer gain altitude. The tail, both wings and part of the engine separated. The blast wave torn off the front of the Challenger, where the crew was, and it soared 20 km up. The deck continued its fall with four astronauts alive. In an attempt to escape, they used backup breathing apparatus. The entire prow of the ship separated from the ship's hull, and the shuttle's heavy structure collapsed into the water. The conclusion of NASA doctors says: it is possible that the team lost consciousness due to pressure loss in the module during the flight.

After the disaster, the US government urgently began searching for the wreckage of the shuttle in the ocean. Even a nuclear submarine took part in the search work. NASA lost about $8 billion.

Judith Resnick, astronaut, Challenger crew member

History of the Space Shuttle missions

The flights were carried out from April 12, 1981 to July 21, 2011. In total, five shuttles were built: Columbia (burned out during atmospheric braking before landing in 2003), Challenger (crashed during launch in 1986), Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavor. Also in 1975, the Enterprise prototype ship was built, but it was never launched into space.

Scenario repetition

The shuttle Columbia crashed on landing on February 1, 2003. On board were seven crew members, all of whom died. On January 16, 2003, as the shuttle Columbia was ascending into orbit, a piece of rocket skin that flew off hit the front of the wing with devastating force. High-speed camera footage showed how a piece of heat-resistant foam was torn off the skin and hit the wing. Further, after examining the records, the scientists came to the conclusion that this could lead to damage to the integrity of the heat-shielding layer. But a thorough analysis was not carried out - human negligence again intervened in the space mission.

When the Columbia entered the zone of the heaviest landing loads, the thermal protection at the site of damage began to crumble. This part of the wing had landing gear. The tires exploded from overheating, a powerful jet of hot gas hit, the wing completely collapsed, and after that the whole ship began to fall apart. Without a wing, the Columbia spun and lost control. Only 41 seconds passed from the beginning of the collapse of the cabin to the death of the crew.

The second large-scale disaster finally undermined the confidence in the Space Shuttle program, and it was closed. July 21, 2011 the ship "Atlantis" completed the last expedition in the history of the project. Starting from this period, disposable Russian Soyuz became the only guide for astronauts to the ISS.

Shuttle "Columbia" went into space 28 once. He spent in space 300,74 days, made during this time 4 808 revolutions around the Earth and flew in total 201,5 million km. A large number of experiments in the field of chemistry, medicine and biology were carried out on board the shuttle.

Destroyed "Union"

The first fatal accident in the history of cosmonautics was the death of pilot Vladimir Komarov during the landing of the Soviet Soyuz-1 spacecraft. Everything went wrong from the start. Soyuz-1 was supposed to dock with Soyuz-2 to return the crew of the first ship, but due to malfunctions, the start of the second was canceled.

When the ship was already in orbit, problems with the solar battery were discovered. The commander was ordered to return to Earth. The pilot almost manually tried to land.

In total, during space launches and test studies, including in the atmospheric layer, more than 350 man, only astronauts - 170 human.

The landing took place in the normal mode, but at the last stage of the landing, the main drag parachute did not open. The spare one opened up, but got tangled in the lines, and the ship crashed into the ground at a speed of 50 m / s, the tanks with hydrogen peroxide exploded, the astronaut died instantly. "Soyuz-1" burned to the ground, the pilot's body was so burned that the experts could hardly identify the fragments.

After the incident, the further implementation of the Soyuz manned launch program was postponed for 18 months, and many design improvements were made. The official cause of the accident was called a flaw in the technology of deploying a brake parachute.

Soviet pilot-cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov

The next dead Soyuz was Soyuz-11. The purpose of the ship's crew was to dock with the Salyut-1 orbital station and carry out a number of works on board. The crew completed their tasks within 11 days. When the headquarters recorded a serious fire, the board was ordered to return to Earth.

All processes - and entry into the atmosphere, and braking, and landing, were carried out flawlessly, but the crew stubbornly did not get in touch with the mission control center. By the time the ship's hatch was opened, all crew members were already dead. They became victims of decompression sickness: when the ship depressurized at high altitude, the pressure dropped sharply to a lethal level. Spacesuits were not provided for in the design of the ship. Decompression sickness is accompanied by unbearable pain, and the cosmonauts simply could not report the problem.

Decompression (caisson) sickness- a disease that occurs when the pressure of the inhaled air decreases, in which gases enter the blood in the form of bubbles, thereby destroying blood vessels, cell walls and leading to blockage of blood flow.

After this tragic accident, all Soyuz were equipped with space suits in case of emergency situations.

First space accident

In 2009, the first space accident occurred - two satellites collided. According to an official statement from Iridium, which was circulated to news agencies, Iridium 33 collided with the Russian satellite Kosmos-2251. The latter was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome back in 1993 and stopped working two years after that.

Rescued astronauts

Of course, not all accidents that happened in space led to the death of people. In 1971, the Soyuz-10 spacecraft launched to the Salyut orbital station with an expedition for a 24-day stay in orbit. During the docking, damage to the docking unit was discovered, the astronauts were unable to board the station and returned to Earth.

And just four years later, in 1975, the Soyuz spacecraft did not enter orbit for docking with the Salyut-4 spacecraft due to an accident during the activation of the third stage of the rocket. The Soyuz landed in Altai, near the border with China and Mongolia. Cosmonauts Vasily Lazarev and Oleg Makarov were found the next day.

Of the latest unsuccessful flight experiences, one can single out the accident that occurred on October 11, 2018. It occurred during the launch of the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle with the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft. Nine minutes after launch, a message about a breakdown came to the control center. The crew made an emergency landing. The reasons for the incident are still being clarified, it is possible that the second stage engines were switched off. The Russian-American crew evacuated in an escape pod.

Dangerous not only in the sky

Space catastrophes also occur on earth, taking much more lives. We are talking about accidents during rocket launches.

On March 18, 1980, the Vostok rocket was being prepared for launch at the Plesetsk cosmodrome. The rocket was refueled with various fuels - nitrogen, kerosene and liquid oxygen. While pouring hydrogen peroxide into the fuel tank, 300 tons of fuel detonated. A terrible fire claimed the lives of 44 people. Four more died from their burns, 39 people were injured.

The commission blamed the employees of the cosmodrome for everything, who had committed negligence in servicing the rocket. It wasn't until 16 years later that an independent investigation was conducted, citing the use of hazardous materials in the construction of hydrogen peroxide fuel filters as the cause.

A similar tragedy happened in 2003 in Brazil at the Alcantara spaceport. The rocket exploded on the launch pad while undergoing final tests, killing 21 people and injuring 20 more. The rocket was Brazil's third failed attempt to send a launch vehicle into space with a research satellite.

The site of the explosion at the Alcantara spaceport.

The Soviet designer and "father" of Russian cosmonautics Sergei Pavlovich Korolev said: "Cosmonautics has a limitless future, and its prospects are as endless as the Universe itself." And already today, engineers are developing space drones for efficient operation in near-Earth orbits in order to avoid the human factor - a frequent cause of large-scale disasters in space. Humanity is already living in anticipation of flights to Mars, the first of which is scheduled for 2030. And the safety of the space industry is an important point in the development of this mission.

Half a century ago something happened that was hard to believe - a man flew into space. Astronauts are the heroes of a bygone generation, but their names are still remembered today. Few people know, but space for a person was far from peaceful, he was given blood. Dead cosmonauts, hundreds of test officers and soldiers who died in explosions and fires in the process of testing rocket technology. Needless to say, thousands of nameless servicemen who died during routine work - crashed, burned alive, poisoned by heptyl. And, despite this, unfortunately, not everyone was satisfied. Flight into space is an unusually dangerous and difficult job: the people who perform it will be discussed in this article ...

Komarov Vladimir Mikhailovich

Pilot-cosmonaut, engineer-colonel, twice Hero of the Soviet Union. More than once he flew on the Voskhod-1 and Soyuz-1 ships. He was the commander of the first ever crew of three. Komarov died on April 24, 1967, when at the end of the flight program, during the descent to Earth, the parachute of the descent vehicle did not open, as a result of which the structure, on board of which the officer was located, crashed into the ground at full speed.

Dobrovolsky Georgy Timofeevich

Soviet cosmonaut, lieutenant colonel of the Air Force, Hero of the Soviet Union. He died on June 30, 1971 in the stratosphere over Kazakhstan. The cause of death is considered to be the depressurization of the Soyuz-11 descent module, probably due to valve failure. He had a huge number of prestigious awards, including the Order of Lenin.

Patsaev Viktor Ivanovich

Pilot-cosmonaut of the USSR, Hero of the Soviet Union, the first astronomer in the world who was lucky enough to work outside the earth's atmosphere. Patsaev was in the same crew as Dobrovolsky, he died with him on June 30, 1971 due to a violation of the tightness of the oxygen valve SA Soyuz-11.

Scobie Francis Richard

NASA astronaut, twice made space flights on the Challenger shuttle. He is listed among those who died in space as a result of the STS-51L accident along with his crew. The launch vehicle with the shuttle exploded 73 seconds after launch, there were 7 people on board. The cause of the disaster is considered to be the burnout of the solid-fuel accelerator wall. Francis Scobie is posthumously inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

Resnick Judith Arlen

An American woman astronaut, spent about 150 hours in space, was part of the crew of the same ill-fated Challenger shuttle and died during its launch on January 28, 1986 in Florida. At one time, she was the second woman to fly into space.

Anderson Michael Phillip

American engineer in the field of aerospace computing, US astronaut pilot, Air Force lieutenant colonel. During his life he flew more than 3000 hours on various jet aircraft. He died while returning from space aboard Columbia STS-107 on February 1, 2003. The accident occurred at an altitude of 63 kilometers above Texas. Anderson and six of his colleagues, after a 15-day stay in orbit, burned to death just 16 minutes before landing.

Ramon Ilan

Israeli Air Force pilot, Israel's first astronaut. He tragically died on February 1, 2003 during the destruction of the same Columbia STS-107 shuttle, which crashed in the dense layers of the earth's atmosphere.

Grissom Virgil Ivan

The world's first commander of a two-seat spacecraft. Unlike the previous participants in the rating, this astronaut died on Earth, still at the preparatory stage of the flight, a month before the scheduled launch of Apollo 1. On January 27, 1967, a pure oxygen fire broke out at the Kennedy Space Center during training, where Virgil Griss and two of his colleagues died.

Bondarenko Valentin Vasilievich

He died under very similar circumstances on March 23, 1961. He was on the list of the first 20 astronauts who were selected for the first ever space flight. When tested by cold and loneliness in a pressure chamber, as a result of an accident, his training woolen suit caught fire, the man died from the resulting burns eight hours later.

Adams Michael James

American test pilot, US Air Force astronaut. He was among those killed in space during his seventh X-15 suborbital flight in 1967. For reasons unknown, the aircraft Adams was on board was completely destroyed over 50 miles above the ground. The causes of the accident are still unknown, all telemetric information was lost along with the remains of the rocket plane.