Today, anyone willing to pay for the trip can book a place on a rocket and go explore space as a tourist. Of course, these flights are very pricey and have not (yet) reached the mass-market level, but they are 100% real and, from the looks of it, reasonably safe. Yet, the road to space hasn’t always been this way — it was paved with many failures, including astronaut lives.
So, has an astronaut ever been lost in space? While no one literally got lost — as in, stranded —lives were lost, both on actual space missions and during mission preparation. Today, we recall astronauts lost in space forever and try to answer — what was the worst astronaut disaster?
Astronauts who died in space missions
Soviet astronaut (or, using the local term, cosmonaut) Vladimir Komarov was the first official space casualty. The astronaut lost his life in 1967 when his Soyuz-1 descent capsule failed to open its parachute system and crashed to the ground. Komarov was the only pilot onboard, so no more lives were lost on that sad day.
However, three more Soviet astronauts died during the Souyz-11 mission in 1971. This time, the capsule depressurised on the descent, and crew members Vlad Volkov, Georgy Dobrovolsky and Viktor Patsaev could not establish or fix the leak in due time. Soviet astronauts at the time did not wear pressurised suits, so the entire crew was killed almost instantly.
Two more horrible tragedies occurred in 1986 and 2003 upon respective crashes of NASA’s shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Both times, the entire complement of seven astronauts lost their lives.
Unlike all other tragedies that happened on the descent, Challenger exploded shortly after launch. And while all these astronauts lost their lives on space missions, space resource Orbital Today explains that, technically, deaths occurred in our planet’s atmosphere rather than beyond.
Ground tragedies with human casualties
<img alt=”NASA’s shuttles Challenger”>
Besides astronauts who lost their lives during actual missions, several specialists tragically died while preparing for flight. Perhaps the most well-known tragedy is the Apollo-1 fire in 1967 that claimed the lives of three crew members doing pre-flight tests. Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee got trapped in the Apollo vehicle and could not get out.
Another horrifying disaster happened shortly after, in 1960. This time, the tragedy struck in the USSR’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in present-day Kazakhstan. Soviet authorities kept the Nedelin disaster secret for almost 30 years, though, which is why fewer people are familiar with this tragedy.
Even today, the official casualty rate is unknown — official Soviet records disclose 78 people, while independent Western resources estimate up to 150 deaths, with some assuming up to 300. Even now, we do not know the exact cause of the tragedy — only that the rocket exploded during launch, killing ground specialists and multiple party officials who came to witness the launch.
So, what was the biggest space tragedy? Judging from the sheer death toll, that is the Nedelin disaster. But if we stick to information that has not been heavily censored for decades, NASA’s shuttle crashes are most shocking — especially considering that they live-streamed on TV.
Has an astronaut ever floated away in space and died?
Another question many people ask with a definitive no for an answer. While it is possible to float away in space, astronauts conduct most outer space operations while safely tethered to their spaceships. A close call did occur in 1991, though, when Soviet astronaut Anatoly Artsebarsky’s tether snapped. However, he safely returned to the Mir station using suit thrusters and no lives were lost on that day.
Speaking of thrusters, the first untethered spacewalk was conducted by astronaut Bruce McCandless in 1984 as part of the Challenger mission. That was the first time astronauts live-tested thrusters that are now installed on all modern spacesuits.
Next, many people wonder — has an astronaut ever got lost in space? As in, lost navigation or got disoriented? Fortunately, the answer here is also no. But there is no smoke without a fire. Several missions did experience navigation problems, and faulty equipment did cause difficulties during astronaut spacewalks.
For example, in 1966, astronaut Gene Cernan faced numerous challenges during the Gemini 9A mission. First, his Astronaut Maneuvering Unit was slow to respond to commands and his visor eventually got fogged up. Or in 1973, when Skylab 4 mission astronaut Jerry Carr got disoriented during a spacewalk and let go of his camera. Fortunately, nothing but a camera was lost on that day.
To wrap up on a cheerful note, the objective list of astronauts lost in space missions and while preparing for them is not too high. Of course, some casualties may forever remain hidden in the USSR archives, but on the whole, the statistics of space deaths are low compared to other travel options. With luck, it will not increase because, if we continue at this pace, space travel may soon cease to be something out of the ordinary!
