Their families often got together, and on rare times when both men were free, they would go hunting together. Vladimir Komarov was among Gagarin’s best friends. Here they’re seen hunting together.īut he wouldn’t back out because he didn’t want Gagarin to die. Komarov told friends he knew he would probably die. Komarov was selected to command the Soyuz 1, in 1967, with Yuri Gagarin as his backup cosmonaut.īoth knew the space capsule was not safe to fly, but everyone in the space program was terrified of Brezhnev’s reaction to the mission being delayed or scrubbed. The next day, a second vehicle (Soyuz 2) would take off, with two additional cosmonauts the two vehicles would meet, dock, Komarov would crawl from one vehicle to the other, exchanging places with a colleague, and come home in the second ship.īrezhnev made it very clear he wanted this to happen. The first capsule to be launched would be the Soyuz 1, with Komarov inside. The plan was for two Soviet Space vehicles to launch into space and perform a dramatic orbital docking that would allow cosmonauts to move between ships. Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union, decided to stage a spectacular mid-space rendezvous between two Soviet spaceships. Only a chipped heel bone survived the crash.Īll this foretold tragedy started with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union, and the government demanded something big from the space program. The above photograph shows the charred remains of Komarov being looked over by Soviet officials during his open-casket funeral. However, because he died when the capsule crashed into the ground, he is not considered the first human fatality in outer space. His spaceflight on Soyuz 1 made him the first Soviet cosmonaut to fly into outer space more than once, and he became the first human to die on a space mission-he was killed when the Soyuz 1 space capsule crashed after re-entry on April 24, 1967, due to a parachute failure. One of them was the Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Mankind’s road to the stars had its unsung heroes. Soviet military officials view the remains of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov.
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