The fatal accident was determined to be the result of a faulty valve seal on the spacecraft's descent vehicle that burst open during its separation from the service module. At an altitude of miles km , the deadly combination of a leaking valve and the vacuum of space rapidly sucked all the air out of the crew cabin, depressurizing it.
And because the valve was hidden below the cosmonauts' seats, it would have been nearly impossible for them to fix the problem in time. As a direct result of the decompression deaths of the Soyuz 11 crew, the USSR quickly made the shift to requiring all cosmonauts to wear pressurized space suits during reentry — a practice that's still in place today.
Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter. View our Privacy Policy. By signing up you may also receive reader surveys and occasional special offers. We do not sell, rent or trade our email lists. Login or Register Customer Service. RISE —. PHASE —. Tonight's Sky — Change location. US state, Canadian province, or country. Tonight's Sky — Select location.
Tonight's Sky — Enter coordinates. UTC Offset:. Picture of the Day Image Galleries. Watch : Mining the Moon for rocket fuel. Queen guitarist Brian May and David Eicher launch new astronomy book. Last chance to join our Costa Rica Star Party! Learn about the Moon in a great new book New book chronicles the space program. Dave's Universe Year of Pluto. Groups Why Join? Astronomy Day. On 28 January the Challenger space shuttle blew up 73 seconds after take-off, owing to a failure on a sealant ring that allowed hot gas from the boosters used to lift the craft in the first two minutes of flight to hit the huge main external tanks containing hydrogen-oxygen fuel.
The Challenger disaster remains perhaps the most notorious in the history of spaceflight, owing to the number of people, many of them schoolchildren, who saw it live on TV. A subsequent report sharply criticised NASA for allowing the incident to happen and failing to intervene during the mission. The remaining four fatalities during spaceflight were all cosmonauts from the Soviet Union.
The first was Vladimir Komarov on 24 April , when the parachute on the landing capsule of his Soyuz 1 mission failed to open. But not everyone who dies in space will be treated like inconvenient cargo. Some of those corpses will actually save lives. Humans have spent millennia traversing difficult landscapes and putting themselves in bizarre and dangerous situations in the name of discovery. Thousands of lives have been lost in this pursuit, and on occasion the deceased have actually saved the lives of their comrades.
Not through acts of deadly heroism, mind you, but through acts of cannibalism. Wolpe says the school of thought on cannibalism for survival is split. Mars boasts a landscape so barren and dead, it would put the frozen mountains that drove the famous Donner party to cannibalism to shame. But no space agency has an official policy on Martian cannibalism—yet. Every astronaut or space tourist wishing to embark on a journey to Mars will ultimately be forced to grapple with the reality of deaths both sudden and slow.
NASA may never have officially published a contingency plan for the Apollo moonwalkers, but they were prepared to lose the crew. In his biography, Nixon speechwriter William Safire recalled the tenuous Apollo 11 liftoff. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. As we enter an age of space exploration sure to be filled with rocket launches and crewed missions, the thought of death looms over every crew-member and decision maker.
Astronaut Terry Virts may never have casually chatted about dying over coffee with his friends, but he knew what was at stake when he launched into space. Like most explorers, shuttle astronaut Mike Massimino is quick to say that the risk is worthwhile. The realistic options for a deceased crewmember—cannibalism, cold storage in the trash room, being freeze-dried and shaken into a million frozen flakes—lack the dignity we associate with the majestic endeavor of spaceflight.
We already accept that Earthbound explorers may suffer indignities if they die in the field. Wolpe sees Mount Everest as a perfect Earthly analogue for the future Mars missions: when people die, their bodies just stay there.
Every year around people attempt to reach the summit of the mountain. Every year, some of those people die. And then another people try the next year. These people want to be first, to be the best, to explore something marvelous and rare.
And with this determination comes the risk of paying the ultimate price.
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