![]() ![]() Based on their reports, the cause of death was suffocation.” They removed them from the descent module. On opening the hatch, they found all three men in their couches, motionless, with dark-blue patches on their faces and trails of blood from their noses and ears. “ knocked on the side, but there was no response from within. Outwardly, there was no damage whatsoever,” recalled Kerim Kerimov, chair of the State Commission, in Ben Evans’ book Foothold in the Heavens. It wasn’t until recovery crews opened the hatch that they discovered all three crew members inside were dead. The spacecraft appeared to make it through the atmosphere just fine, ultimately landing in Kazakhstan as planned. To those on the ground, everything about Soyuz 11’s reentry seemed to go off without a hitch. On June 29, the cosmonauts loaded back into the Soyuz 11 spacecraft and began their descent to Earth. Once aboard, they spent the next three weeks not only setting a new record for the longest time spent in space, but also carrying out loads of experiments focused on how the human body deals with extended periods of weightlessness. Unlike the previous crew, the three Soyuz 11 cosmonauts - Georgi Dobrovolski, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev - successfully entered Salyut 1. Just a few months later, on June 6, the Soyuz 11 mission took another crack at accessing the space station. ![]() However, all three members of the crew ultimately made it home safe with no long-lasting effects. During their premature return trip back to Earth, toxic chemicals leaked into the air supply of Soyuz 10, causing one cosmonaut to pass out. Though the Soyuz 10 crew docked safely with the Salyut 1, issues with the entry hatch prevented them from entering the space station. Just a few days later, a crew of three Soviets blasted off aboard Soyuz 10 with the goal of entering the space station and staying in orbit for a full month. The first space station to park itself above Earth’s atmosphere was the USSR’s Salyut 1, which launched (unmanned) on April 19, 1971. Cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolski (left), Vladislav Volkov (middle) and Viktor Patsayev (right), the only three people to die in space, are featured on three USSR stamps. ![]()
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