Russia's "BIGGEST FAILURE" in space SHOCKED the entire industry...

Russia's "BIGGEST FAILURE" in space SHOCKED the entire industry...

In the early hours of 30 June 1971, the Soviet Union prepared to welcome its three latest cosmonaut heroes back to Earth after a record-breaking mission. Not only had the Soyuz 11 team—Georgi Dobrovolski, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev—spent more than 23 days in orbit, but they had also successfully occupied the world’s first true space station.
It was a fitting response to the U.S. achievement of placing a man on the Moon. As the commander of one of the recovery helicopters spotted the parachute of Soyuz 11’s descent module, it was a glorious sight. The helicopters touched down and the would-be rescuers made their way cheerfully to the spacecraft, still superheated and charred from re-entry.

They could not have anticipated the horror that they would find inside.
All three cosmonauts lay dead in their seats, with blue splotches on their faces and blood trickling from their noses and ears. On June 30, 1971, humankind was forced to grapple with the first — and so far only — deaths to occur in space.

Honestly, from the outset, Soyuz 11 was an unhappy assignment.
After Neil Armstrong’s historic first steps on the Moon, the Soviets nixed their own lunar landing plans in favor of an Earth-orbiting space station. Salyut 1 was launched in April 1971, but its first crew failed to dock with the station during the Soyuz 10 mission. That meant it was up to Alexei Leonov (the world’s first spacewalker), Valeri Kubasov, and Pyotr Kolodin to try again with Soyuz 11.
After launching on June 6, 1971, Soyuz 11’s daylong trip to Salyut 1 proved quite uneventful, with the three cosmonauts boarding the new space station with few issues. For the next three weeks, they carried out many experiments, including nurturing Chinese cabbage and bulb onions, taking spectrograms of stars, and photographing snow and ice on the banks of the River Volga. The orbiting trio was even featured on Soviet evening television.

Still, happiness proved elusive.
The disjointed shift work became a grueling marathon, the monotony of which Dobrovolski lamented in his ever-present diary. An overheating instrument also flooded part of the station with smoke, taxing the cosmonauts’ nerves and testing their ability to remain a cohesive crew. Fortunately, some harmony returned when Patsayev became the first man to celebrate a birthday in space, with his crewmates treating him to a surprise special meal of veal, cookies, and blackberry juice.

Unfortunately, it would be Patsayev’s last birthday.

Late on June 29, Soyuz 11 finally undocked from Salyut 1. Three hours later, with their primary mission complete, the cosmonauts fired their ship’s engine to return to Earth. Volkov jokingly asked flight controllers to ensure that a supply of cognac — a traditional welcome-home gift — was waiting for them at their landing site.

Twenty-nine minutes before touchdown, while still at an altitude of around 100 miles (160 kilometres), explosive charges were fired, as planned, to separate Soyuz 11’s orbital and instrument modules. The bell-shaped capsule was now the crew’s only defense against the fiery furnace of re-entry.
Russia's "BIGGEST FAILURE" in space SHOCKED the entire industry...