Accidents and incidents related to the space conquest

the space accidents , that it is with the drive or at the time of space flights, killed 23 spationauts (either approximately 5% of all the people having been in space), and much more among the members of the crews on the ground. This article gives a vision of the disasters and quasi disasters known which occurred during inhabited space missions, the training of the astronauts and the tests, assembly for the flight of space engines inhabited or not. The problems due to accidents during tests of ICBM are not included, nor during the tests of Russian missiles and German during the second world war. The phantom Cosmonautes are not included either which not officially admitted by the the USSR.

In all this page, the French term spationaut will be used independently of nationality of the astronaut/cosmonaut.

Died in space flights

The history of the space exploration is marked out many tragedies: in 2007, the accidents in flight had killed 18 spationauts, the accidents with drive 12, and the accidents on the step of launching at least 70 members of the ground personnel.

Twenty-two people died in space vehicle: Three on Apollo 1, one on Soyuz 1, one on X-15-3, three on Soyuz 11, seven on Challenger, and seven on Columbia.

The lower number of died on the vessels of the Soyuz type are statistically due to the fact that the capsule carries only 3 team members (against 7 for the space shuttle), and than the flights are less frequent than those of the American navattes. Thus, no death is to be regretted on the missions Soyuz since 1971, and none with the current Design Soyuz. Moreover, two major incidents (fire on the launching pad, and failure of the placing in orbit) showed the robust design of the capsule: in comparable circumstances, the shuttle would have been condemned, just as its crew. Conversely, the cosmonauts on board a Soyuz capsule are likely much more to survive an accident of the type of that of Challenger, the Russian capsule having its tower of ejection and a system of return on the completely automatic ground.

NASA honors the astronauts having lost the life in the exercise with their mission by a Mémorial in the tourist complex of the space center Kennedy in Merritt Island in Florida. The Russian spationauts, during the time of the Soviet Union, were generally honoured by a burial with the Nécropole with the Kremlin to Moscow.

Accidents in flight

There were six accidents fatal in vol. In each case, all the crew is deceased. Until now, it there forever have accidents during which only one member of the crew would be deceased.

April 24th 1967: Problem of parachute : Soviet Union, the spationaut Vladimir Komarov dies on board Soyuz 1. Its one day mission was enamelled by a series of defects on this new type of space capsule, culminating with the setting out of torch of the Parachute shortly after the atmospheric Rentrée. Komarov died during the crushing of its capsule with the ground.
November 15th 1967: Problem of control : Michael J. Adams dies during the suborbital Vol in a Avion rocket. Major Adams was a Pilot of the United States Air Force taking part in program NASA/USAF X-15. During the flight X-15 191, its 7th flight, the plane starts by presenting electric problems, then problems of control to the Apogée of the vol. It is as possible as the pilot was disorientated. During the re-entry since 81,1 km of altitude, X-15 made yaws out of control and was put in rotation at the speed of Mach 5. Excessive acceleration led to the dislocation of X-15 to the altitude of 19.8 km. One decreed on a purely posthumous basis the wings of astronauts to Major Adams since the flight exceeded the altitude of 80,5 km (which is the definition of the border of space for USAF), although it did not reach the internationally recognized limit space which is of 100 km.
June 30th 1971: Crew exposed to the vacuum of space : The crew of the Soyuz 11, Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev and Vladislav Volkov, were killed after désamarrage of the Space station Salyut 1 after a 3 weeks stay. A valve opened accidentally during the separation of the Module of service, letting the air escape in space. The atmospheric re-entry and the Atterrissage proceeded in an entirely automatic way, and the death of the crew was noted only after the opening of the module.
January 28th 1986: the shuttle explodes after takeoff : first fatal accident including a multiple flight in a program U.S.. The Space shuttle Challenger is destroyed 73 seconds after takeoff. The analysis of the accident showed a failure of a joint which allowed hot gases coming from the booster rocket (SRB), which deteriorated the external reservoir, and the bond between the tank and the booster rocket. The connection of the booster rocket damaged, the SRB was put has to rotate and accelerated the destruction of the tank. The area postpones tank, touched, because disintegration of Challenger , involving the loss of the seven team members: Greg Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Michael J. Smith, and Dick Scobee. The investigators of NASA determined that at least two members of the crew had been able to survive the first explosion (their oxygen tanks having been struck). Conscious or not, these survivors were killed at the time of the impact of the cockpit (almost intact) with surface water to 320 km/h. See also Explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
2003 : the shuttle explodes while entering the atmosphere : The space shuttle '' Columbia was destroyed at the time of its re-entry in the atmosphere after a two weeks mission. Damage on the thermal protective system of the shuttle led to a failure structural on the left wing causing with final the explosion of the shuttle. The investigations after the tragedy revealed that the damage on stops reinforced wing had with a block of insulating foam which had been detached from the external tank during takeoff. Rick D. Husband, William McCool, Michael P. Anderson, David Mr. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel B. Clark, and Ilan Ramon belonged to the missing crew.

Accidents of drive

In addition to the accidents in flight, spationauts were killed during the drive.

March 23rd 1961: Fire on board : First death of with space exploration. Valentine Bondarenko was involved in a room with low pressure in an atmosphere of Oxygène. It made fall accidentally a fabric soaked with alcohol on a hot electric element. In the pure oxygen environment, the atmosphere suddenly blazed up. Bondarenko was hardly alive when the room was open: burned on all the surface of the body, one posed the perfusions on the plant of his feet, only parts of the body remained intact thanks to his shoes. He died of the continuations of his burns little time after his entry at the hospital. The death of Bondarenko was not known general public for a long time, the Soviet leaders having hidden it.
October 31st 1964: Collision of bird : Theodore Freeman was killed when a Oie entered in collision with the cockpit of its plane T-38 of drive. Pieces of Plexiglas penetrated in the engine and caused its destruction. Freeman actuated its Ejector seat, but it was too close to the ground so that its Parachute opens correctly. The creation of the ejector seat zéro-zéro eliminated this problem.
February 28th 1966: Crash landing with the landing : The original crew of Gemini 9, Elliott See and Charles Bassett, were killed whereas they tried to make land their T-38 by bad weather. See badly judged the approach and was crushed on the aeronautical factory McDonnel.
January 27th 1967: fire on board : A fire was right of the crew of Apollo 1 during a drive in their capsule. An electric spark put fire at the environment of Oxygène pure, killing Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee, in an accident similar to that of Bondarenko in 1961.
October 5th 1967: defect of control : Clifton Williams died after a mechanical problem which because the loss of answer of controls of its T-38. It belonged to the crew of replacement for the mission Apollo 9 and was to be the pilot of the Lunar module for Apollo 12. The escutcheon of Apollo 12 has four stars: for each spationaut of the crew plus for Williams.
December 8th 1967: Crash landing of plane : Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr. was to be the first Afro-Américain spationaut for the program Manned Orbital Laboratory (Orbital Laboratory Manned), but it never went in space. He died in the crash landing of sound F-104 Starfighter on the air base of Edwards in California.
March 27th 1968: Crash landing of plane : Youri Gagarine died in the accident of sound Mig-15 of drive while it prepared the mission Soyuz 3. The offciel report/ratio spoke about Collision of bird or owing to the fact that it would have turned too quickly with an aim of avoiding something in the air to explain the accident. But in 2003 it appeared that the KGB had found that the official report was false and that the accident was due to a human negligence; a colonel would have given to Gagarine an erroneous weather report/ratio. The Soviet government decided to change the official version of its death because Gagarine was a national hero and that to die in an accident of drive was a bad publicity. It was thus published that Gagarine had died heroically during the test of a prototype signal-secrecy.

Serious accidents (without dead)

Many missions and drives knew accidents which could have been fatal. The accidents are several types: several entries in the atmosphere delicate (Soyuz 5), the capsule Mercury 4 sliding ring, and the crew of Voskhod 2 spending one night in a forest, encircled by the Wolf S.

April 12th 1961: Failure of separation : During the flight of Vostok 1, after interlocking of the reverse thrust, the module of service of Vostok remained attached to the module of re-entry by some wire. The two halves of the vessel were to separate ten seconds after interlocking from the retrorockets. But they separated only 10 minutes afterwards, when the package of wire burned. Calculations of reentry in the atmosphere were distorted and the capsule started to rotate until, after separation, it was possible to stabilize it.
July 21st 1961: the capsule runs : After Liberty Bell 7 lands on sea in the Atlantique, the hatchway was expelled by the emergency system, letting water enter the capsule and lack of drowning Gus Grissom, which succeeds in being extracted from this one before it runs. Grissom succeeds in being hélitreuillé by the helicopter of rescue before its combination does not fill up water and does not involve it at the bottom of water.
March 18th 1965: Error of design of the Spacesuit : Alexei Leonov was the first space walker at the time of the mission Voskhod 2. After outside twelve minutes, the combination of Leonov had inflated at the point to be able to return by the trap door of exit. It opened a valve to allow the pressure combination to evacuate itself, and was hardly able to return in the capsule before being taken of giddinesses due to the low pressure.
August 29th 1965: Programming error : The capsule Gemini 5 aterrit to 130 km of its point envisaged in the Pacific Ocean because of a programming error. The Period of revolution of the Earth was programmed as being of a solar Jour in the place of a sidereal Jour.
May 17th 1966: Problem of equipment : Gemini 8: an engine of defective attitude refused to die out and actuated the capsule in an uncontrolled rotation. The Centrifugal force becomes so intense that the crew made a blackout before being able to take again control.

Three of the five vehicles of drive and research on the lunar landing (LLRV and LLTV) was destroyed:

May 6th 1968: LLRV N°1 is crushed with Ellington, Texas; Neil Armstrong (pilot) is ejected without damage.
December 8th 1968: the LLTV No 1 is crushed with Ellington, Texas. Joseph Algranti ejects himself without damage.
January 29th 1971: A LLTV is crushed with Ellington, Texas. Stuart Present is ejected without damage.

January 18th 1969: problem of separation : Soyuz 5 had an atmospheric re-entry and a difficult landing when the module of service of the capsule refused to separate, forcing the capsule to return in an incorrect way. The module of service was surbedded before the capsule was destroyed, authorizing a hard landing in the the Ural.
November 14th 1969: the Lightning : The rocket which launched Apollo 12 was struck by the lightning little time after takeoff. The majority of the systems on board were temporarily except service, including the guidance systems and of navigation. The flight was not cancelled because the rocket Saturn V had its own navigation system, which had not been affected.
April 14th 1970: Explosion on board : The most famous avoided disaster of accuracy, the crew of Apollo 13 turned over on Earth after an explosion occurred in the vessel on the way for the moon. They survived after the majority of the systems on board were put except service while hoping on the lunar module to bring the necessary one to their survival to them and energy for the return.

Apollo 13 also knew a problem with the launching which was with two fingers of prvoquer the abortion of launching, but that was occulted by the later events. The central engine of the second stage knew violent jolts what involved its premature extinction. The machine of two tons, firmly moored, oscillated, oscillation from top to bottom of amplitude 76 mm and frequency 16 Hz. After three seconds of oscillations, the commutor of the room with low pressure actuated and cut the engine, although it was not conceived for this case. If this phenomenon had perduré, that could have led to the disintegration of the rocket.

January 23rd 1971: crash landing of helicopter : Gene Cernan flew on board a Hélicoptère for its drive as commander of rempacement of Apollo 14. The helicopter was crushed in the Banana river with Cap Canaveral in Florida. Cernan drowned almost because it did not carry a life jacket and accepted burns with the second degree. The official reports spoke about mechanical problem. Later, in its autobiography, Cernan admitted that it flew too low to impress the sailors of the corner. James McDivitt, a manager of Apollo, required so that Cernan be withdrawn from the crews in flight and so that he is not the commander of Apollo 17. But Cernan was defended by Deke Slayton and the command of Apollo 17 was given to him. James McDivitt resigned shortly after Apollo 16.
April 5th 1975: problem of separation : The mission Soyuz 18a almost finished in disaster when the second and third stages did not separate because of defective explosive bolts. The capsule separated in urgency from the booster rocket carried out a re-entry in a nonconventional way . Because the speed of reentry, the crew suffered from acceleration going up to 21.3 G . After the landing, the vehicle ran to the bottom of a hill and stopped at the edge of a chasm. Although the crew survived, Vassili Lazarev, the commander, could fly never again because of the many internal wounds caused by undergone acceleration.
July 24th 1975: pollutant gas on board : During the final descent and the deployment of the parachute of the module of ordering of the Apollo-Soyuz test project, crew U.S. was exposed to Peroxyde of nitrogen with 300 µL/L coming from the shuttle and entering by the air flow of the cabin. A button had been left in the bad position. 400µL/L is fatal. The heart of Vance Brand was arrété but it was saved. The team members suffered from feelings of burns to their eyes, face, throat and lungs. Thomas Stafford took the emergency oxygen masks quickly and put some at Brand and given to Deke Slayton. The exposure to gas lasted since an altitude of 7.300 m to the ground. The crew was hospitalized two weeks with Hawaii before their lungs return to the normal.
October 16th 1976: the capsule of landing runs : The capsule Soyuz 23 lands on a cold lake and bored the surface, trained at the bottom of the lake by the parachute. The crew was saved after a very difficult mission of rescue.
September 26th 1983: fire in the vehicle of launching : The crew of the Soyuz T-10-1 was saved by the back-up system when the rocket which was to propel them in space took fire on the step of launching.
July 29th 1985: STS-51-F: Problem of engine of the space shuttle in flight : after five minutes, forty-five seconds of rise, one of the three principal engines of Challenger died out because of a misreading of the excessive temperature. At the same time and for the same reasons a second engine almost stopped, but this was discovered and repaired by action of the controllers of vol. If the second engine had stopped, the shuttle would have been crushed in the Atlantic and the crew would surely have been lost. THERE did not exist procedure of reinflation before the mission Challenger STS-51-L and its disaster. This mission ended in the return to earth by a procedure of exit of orbit which allowed the shuttle a safe return.
September 5th 1988: Problem of sensors : The spationauts Vladimir Liakhov and Abdul Ahad Mohmand (of Afghanistan) of the program Soyuz TM-5 separated from the space station Mir. It separated from the module orbital and prepared with the firing for exit of orbit. But nothing occurred because the infra-red sensor of altitude did not give good altitude. Seven minutes later, good altitude was reached. the principal engine started, but Lyakhov cut it after 3 seconds for éviterun landing too catastrophe (at a too high speed). A second startup three hours later lasted only six seconds. Lyakhov immediately tried to leave the orbit manually, but the computer cut the engine after sixty seconds. After three tests, the spationauts were obliged to remain in orbit one day moreover, waiting until they return in alignment for the descent towards the site of landing. They remained one day more in the exiguous module of descent with little food and water and without conveniences. The descent occurred normally the September 7th 1988.
February 23rd 1997: fire on board : A fire took on board the space station Mir when a box of Perchlorate of lithium used for generated oxygen flees. Fire was extinct in 90 seconds but smoke remained longer.
June 25th 1997: collision in space : During the test of restowing with the vessel cargo liner Progress - M 34, cargo liner entered in collision with the Spektr module involving of the damage to the solar panels and a hole the Sektr module which was depressurized. The crew could isolate the module from the remainder of the station.
July 23rd 1999: Lack of energy of the engine and hydrogen escape: five seconds after takeoff, a put short-circuit out-service controls of two engines of the space shuttle. The engines automatically switché for the back-up system. In the event of another short-circuit, the shuttle would have risked planger in the ocean. In same time, a problem in an engine involved a hydrogen escape. That because a breakdown of fuel but the shuttle has nevertheless could carry out its mission on an orbit a little lower.

Fatal accidents with civilians and team on the ground

See too

List of the articles relating to astronautics
List of the astronauts by name
Technological advances related to space

References

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