Worst Disasters in Space Flight History

While training in an altitude chamber, Soviet cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko was sterilizing sensor attachment sites on his skin with alcohol pads. One of the discarded pads landed on an electric hot plate and started a vigorous fire that immediately engulfed his suit. Due to the time it took to relieve pressure through bleed valves before the chamber could be opened, rescuers didn’t reach the cosmonaut for minutes and he died in the hospital from his burns.

Mercury-Redstone 4, the second U.S. human spaceflight, was manned by astronaut Gus Grissom. The flight went as planned and landed in the Atlantic Ocean after re-entry. When it touched down, however, pyrotechnics fired erroneously and blew the emergency hatch open. As water entered the vessel, nicknamed Liberty Bell 7, Grissom managed to escape. Liberty Bell sank, and Grissom nearly drowned due to a gap in his suit, but was rescued in the nick of time by a Navy helicopter.

During a 14-day Apollo experiment to determine the effects on the human body of breathing pure oxygen at simulated altitudes, four U.S. Navy officers were burned – two seriously – when an electrical fire started at a light fixture. In the 100% oxygen environment, the fire spread quickly from a towel they were using to smother the flames to their clothing.

As pilot Bill Weaver and reconnaissance systems officer Jim Zwayer executed a high-speed, high-altitude test flight near Tucumcari, New Mexico, their SR-71 aircraft experienced engine unstart and broke apart mid-flight. Weaver was thrown unconscious from the plane and later regained consciousness and successfully landed in his parachute. Zwayer likely died immediately during the high g-force bailout.

The M-21 mothership was designed to launch the D-21 supersonic reconnaissance drone. During a test launch, one of the only two M-21 ships ever built broke apart in midair while traveling at Mach speeds after the launched drone failed to gain enough speed to penetrate the shockwave coming off the ship, and instead collided with it. Although pilot Bill Park and launch control officer Ray Torrick both landed safely in the Pacific Ocean, Torrick drowned when his suit took on water.

Apollo 1 was America’s first crewed mission aimed at landing humans on the moon. During a test in which the cabin of Apollo 1 was filled with pure pressurized oxygen, an electrical short caused by an unprotected wire broke out. The crew inside could not open the hatch due to the pressure in the room, and teams outside the cabin couldn’t release them due to the extreme heat and smoke. Astronauts Gus Grissom (who had survived the Liberty Bell 7 sinking), Ed White, and Roger Chaffee suffocated to death.

Soyuz 1, a Soviet spacecraft with a single crewmember, successfully launched into orbit on April 23, 1967. Unfortunately, one half of the ship’s solar array failed to deploy, leading to a power shortage, and the mission was called off. As cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov manually controlled the crippled ship during re-entry into earth’s atmosphere, the main parachute failed to deploy. The reserve chute then became tangled, leading to a high speed ground impact. Komarov did not survive the crash.

During a suborbital spaceflight of the joint NASA/USAF experimental X-15 spaceplane, an electrical disturbance possibly led to a slight failure in the aircraft’s control systems, ending with the plane going into a high Mach spin. Pilot Michael Adams successfully maneuvered the plane out of the spin, but it went into an inverted dive and he likely lost consciousness. The aircraft broke apart mid-air and Adams died in the crash.

Aiming to land on the moon, Apollo 13 launched on April 11, 1970. Two days into the flight, an oxygen tank exploded, venting its contents and the contents of the adjoining tank into space. This led to the loss of all the ship’s fuel cells, crucial oxygen reserves for breathing, and command system power. The crew was able to survive their cold and harrowing trip back by improvising solutions in the lunar module until their successful re-entry. They landed safely in the South Pacific on April 17.

The Soyuz 11 mission was the first and only crewed mission to successfully enter the world’s first space station, Salyut 1. Soviet cosmonauts Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev spent over 20 days on the space station before departing. During their preparation for re-entry, a pyrotechnic failure caused the ship’s breathing vent to open at an altitude of 104 miles, leading to a rapid depressurization that killed the crew within seconds. They remain the only humans to have died while in space.

As the Soviet ship Soyuz 18-1 launched in an attempt to dock at the Salyut 4 space station, an electrical malfunction led to a cascade of problems involving the breakaway parts of the launch booster, which failed to detach from the ship. Safety mechanisms kicked in at 111 miles altitude, finally separating the capsule from the faulty launch vehicle. The crew survived a high g-force re-entry and landed in the Altai Mountains, where the capsule rolled down an incline and stopped just before falling off of a cliff. Commander Vasily Lazarev never fully recovered from his internal injuries, and never went into space again.

The joint U.S.-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was the first crewed international space mission. The mission was successful, except for a human error during the landing of the Apollo craft that led to toxic propellant fumes entering the cabin. One member of the crew lost consciousness, but another was able to get an oxygen mask onto him. After landing, the crew spent two weeks hospitalized while they recovered.

The mission of Soyuz 23 was to dock on the Salyut 5 space station; however, the automatic docking system malfunctioned during the ship’s approach to the station, and fuel reserves were burned dangerously low. The mission was aborted and the craft re-entered earth’s atmosphere successfully. It landed in the partially frozen Lake Tengiz during a blizzard and sank beneath the surface. The recovery team took nine hours to extract the crew, whom they had assumed to be dead. The two men were cold, but were alive and well.

During a planned five-day orbit, the crew of STS-2 were to test equipment including a shuttle imaging radar system and a robotic arm called Canadarm. The mission was cut to two days when a fuel cell that produced electricity and drinking water malfunctioned, leading to excess hydrogen in the water. When the crew drank the water, it caused them to belch; but belching in zero gravity leads to regurgitation. Hence, the crew stopped drinking and returned severely dehydrated.

As Soyuz T-10-1 prepared for liftoff in an attempt to meet up with the Salyut 7 space station, a fuel leak caused the launch vehicle to catch fire. After multiple attempts by both the cabin crew and the ground crew to activate the escape system, it finally activated and detached from the booster seconds before the booster exploded. An emergency parachute deployed and the capsule landed 2.5 miles from the burning launch pad with the crew shaken but uninjured aside from bruises.

With a crew of seven, including New Hampshire school teacher Christa McAuliffe, the Challenger space shuttle was intended to orbit earth while the astronauts deployed a satellite and studied Halley’s Comet. Faulty seals in one of the rocket boosters led to an explosion just over a minute after liftoff, and the orbiter, traveling at Mach 1.2, was torn apart due to its rapid deceleration. All crew members perished in the disintegration or subsequent landing in the Atlantic.

During its launch on Jan. 16, 2003, the Columbia space shuttle was damaged when a piece of foam from its tank broke off and struck the thermal covering on its left wing. The damage went unnoticed and the seven member crew completed a 15-day mission in orbit. During re-entry, the damage became apparent as heat melted through the wing and caused a loss of control that led to the disintegration of the orbiter at 40 miles altitude. All crew members were killed.

After a successful mission to the International Space Station, Soyuz TMA-11 experienced a high g-force, ballistic re-entry after the descent module and propulsion module failed to separate from one another. The spacecraft landed nearly 300 miles from its target and the recovery team were delayed in locating it, but the crew survived with only one member being hospitalized for minor injuries.

SpaceShipTwo is a suborbital space plane meant for space tourism. During a test flight over the Mojave desert, the first SpaceShipTwo was in ascent when a descent mechanism deployed prematurely, causing the ship to break apart in mid-air. The disintegration killed pilot Michael Alsbury and seriously injured the other crewman, who was able to escape the wreckage and deploy his parachute.