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Soyuz 11

️Sat Feb 01 2003

Crew

Number in parentheses indicates number of spaceflights by each individual prior to and including this mission.
*Georgi Dobrovolski (1) - Commander
*Vladislav Volkov (2) - Flight Engineer
*Viktor Patsayev (1) - Test Engineer

The prime crew for Soyuz 11 consisted of Alexei Leonov, Valeri Kubasov and Pyotr Kolodin. A medical X-ray examination four days before launch suggested that Kubasov might have tuberculosis, and according to the mission rules, the prime crew was replaced with the back-up crew. For Dobrovolski and Patsayev, this was to be their first space mission. After the failure of Salyut 2 to orbit, Kubasov and Leonov were reassigned to Soyuz 19 for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975.

Reserve crew

*Aleksei Gubarev - Commander
*Vitali Sevastyanov - Flight Engineer
*Anatoli Voronov - Test Engineer

Mission parameters

*Mass: 14,970 pounds (6,790 kg)
*Perigee: convert|163|km|mi|0|lk=on
*Apogee: convert|237|km|mi|0|abbr=on
*Inclination: 51.5°
*Period: 88.4 min

Mission highlights

The Soyuz spacecraft was launched on June 7, 1971, from Baikonur Cosmodrome in central Kazakh SSR. Several months earlier, the first mission to the Salyut, Soyuz 10, had failed to successfully dock with the station.Cite web|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,902953,00.html|title=A Troubled Salyut|accessyear=2007|accessmonthday=October 20|publisher=Time Magazine|year=1971|author=Time Magazine] Soyuz 11, however, successfully docked with Salyut 1 on June 7 and the cosmonauts remained on-board for 22 days, setting space endurance records that would hold until the American Skylab 2 mission in May-June 1973.

Upon first entering the station, the crew encountered a smokey and burnt atmosphere and after replacing part of the ventilation system spent the next day back in their Soyuz until the air cleared. Their stay in Salyut was productive, including live television broadcasts. However, a fire broke out on day 11 of their stay causing mission planners to consider abandoning the station. The planned highlight of the mission was to have been the observation of an N-1 booster launch, but the launch was postponed. The crew also found that using the exercise treadmill as they were required to do twice a day caused the whole station to vibrate. "Pravda" released news of the mission and regular updates while it was in progress.

Death of crew

On June 30, 1971, after an apparently normal re-entry of the capsule of the Soyuz 11 mission, the recovery team opened the capsule to find the crew dead.Cite web|url=http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-02-01-accident-timeline_x.htm|title=Deadly accidents in the history of space exploration|accessyear=2007|accessmonthday=October 20|publisher=USA Today|year=2003|author=USA Today] It quickly became apparent that they had suffocated. The fault was traced to a breathing ventilation valve, located between the orbital module and the descent module, that had been jolted open as the descent module separated from the service module.Cite web|url=http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4209/ch8-2.htm|title=The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project|accessyear=2007|accessmonthday=October 20|publisher=NASA|year=1974|author=NASA] Cite web|url=http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/space_level2/soyuz11.html|title=The crew of Soyuz 11|accessyear=2007|accessmonthday=October 20|publisher=NASA|author=NASA] The two were held together by explosive bolts designed to fire sequentially, but in fact, they fired simultaneously. The force of this caused the internal mechanism of the pressure equalization valve to loosen a seal that was usually discarded later, and normally allowed automatic adjustment of the cabin pressure. The valve opened at an altitude of km to mi|168|wiki=yes, and the gradual loss of pressure was fatal within seconds.Cite web|url=http://www.janes.com/aerospace/civil/news/jsd/jsd030203_3_n.shtml|title=A brief history of space accidents|accessyear=2007|accessmonthday=October 20|publisher=Jane's Information Group|year=2003|author=Jane's Information Group] The valve was located beneath the cosmonaut's couches, and was impossible to locate and block before the air was lost. Flight recorder data from the single cosmonaut outfitted with biomedical sensors showed death occurred within 40 seconds of pressure loss. By 935 seconds after the retrofire, the cabin pressure was zero, and remained there until the capsule hit the earth's atmosphere.

Film later declassified showed support crews attempting CPR on the cosmonauts. [This footage was shown during the 1994 TV adaptation of the documentary "Moon Shot" by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton.] They attempted to save the cosmonauts in the hope that the decompression accident occurred in a time-frame that might have allowed for some of them to be saved. Current understanding of exposure to vacuum, however, shows this to be impossible, as vacuum exposure leads to rapid deoxygenation of the blood, pulmonary hemorrhaging, and brain death within two minutes of continuous exposure.

The cosmonauts were given a large state funeral and buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis at Red Square, Moscow near the remains of Yuri Gagarin. U.S. astronaut Tom Stafford was one of the pallbearers. They were also each posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal. Craters on the Moon were named after the three cosmonauts.

The Soyuz spacecraft was extensively redesigned after this incident to carry only two cosmonauts. The extra room meant that the crew could wear space suits during launch and landing.Cite web|url=http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/2/5/135817.shtml|title=Space Race Is Alive and Well|accessyear=2007|accessmonthday=October 20|publisher=NewsMax|year=2003|author=Charles R. Smith] A Soyuz capsule would not hold three cosmonauts again until the Soyuz-T redesign in 1980, which freed enough space for three cosmonauts in lightweight pressure suits to travel in the capsule.

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