Remembering Soyuz 11
On June 29, 1971, the Soyuz 11 capsule reentered Earth’s atmosphere after a successful mission at the world’s first space station, Salyut 1. During the reentry, everything went according to plan, but when the capsule was opened up, Soviet ground teams found all three cosmonauts had died in their seats.
The cabin of the spacecraft depressurized when a valve was opened without the cosmonauts’ knowledge. The rapid depressurization, which took place while the capsule was still in space, left the cosmonauts with seconds to react. Unfortunately, they were unsuccessful. Cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolskiy, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev perished the only three known deaths while humans were working in space.
Other American or Soviet tragedies either happened in the atmosphere or during training exercises, but all of those were still here on Earth.
The secretive nature of the Soviet space program meant that the entire story of how the cosmonauts died wasn’t fully known in the immediate aftermath of the mission. There were some members of the medical community that believed long-term weightlessness could have been a contributing factor. Others in NASA’s medical community thought that the evidence pointed to a depressurization event or a toxic gas release in the cabin.
Eventually, the Soviet Union shared the cause of death, reporting on July 12th, that:
“On the ship's descent trajectory, 30 minutes before landing, there occurred a rapid drop of pressure within the descent vehicle which led to the sudden deaths of the cosmonauts. The drop, in pressure, resulted from a loss of the ship's sealing. An inspection of the descent vehicle… showed that there are no failures in its structure.”
American astronaut Thomas P. Stafford went to Moscow for the state funeral as a representative for President Nixon. President Nixon gave this statement after the event.
“The American people join in expressing to you and the Soviet people our deepest sympathy on the tragic deaths of the three Soviet cosmonauts. [150] The whole world followed the exploits of these courageous explorers of the unknown and shares the anguish of their tragedy. But the achievements of cosmonauts Dobrovolsky, Volkov and Patsayev remain. It will, I am sure, prove to have contributed greatly to the further achievements of the Soviet program for the exploration of space and thus to the widening of man's horizons.”
Space exploration is a dangerous business, with American and Soviet crews having perished in the pursuit of knowledge.
During the Apollo 15 mission, American astronaut David Scott left behind a memorial to fallen astronauts and cosmonauts that had lost their lives during the exploration of space. It was a simple plaque, with the names of astronauts bordered by simple lines. Among the names were the crew of Soyuz 11, who’d perished before the launch of Apollo 15. Besides the name plaque, Scott placed a small aluminum sculpture that had a vaguely humanoid form. There is controversy as to what the sculpture represents, but it’s seen as the “fallen astronaut” statue which is pictured below.