Space disasters and near misses
1970-2003
'Houston, we have a problem' – a disaster averted
14 April 1970
Second only to the landing on the Moon, the Apollo 13 'near miss' is among the most famous stories of humanity's ventures into space. Following an explosion on board, which crippled their spacecraft as they returned from the Moon, the Apollo 13 astronauts and the NASA team back on Earth had to improvise a means of getting them back safely. They did so by cannibalising the power and life support systems on the lunar module. It was one of the most nail-biting rescue missions of all time – and by far the most remarkable yet carried out in space.
Soyuz 10 air supply failure on re-entry
25 April 1971
Exactly four years after the Soyuz 1 crash, the first crew of the Soviet Union's Salyut 1 space station attempted to dock their spacecraft Soyuz 10 with the station. They were unable to open Salyut 1's hatch, however, and, when a second attempt failed, returned to Earth after less than two days in space. During re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, problems arose that led to the craft's air supply becoming toxic. Crew member Nikolai Rukavishnikov lost consciousness but he and his two colleagues survived.
Soyuz 11 cosmonauts found dead on landing
29 June 1971
Shortly before midnight GMT on 29 June 1971, the hatch to the Soyuz 11 space capsule was opened following its return to Earth. All three crew members – Vladislav Volkov, Georgi Dobrovolski and Viktor Patsayev – were found to be dead. An investigation revealed that a valve designed to equalise pressure in the module after it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere had opened prematurely, causing the loss of the cosmonauts' air supply. They received a state funeral in Moscow and are buried in the Kremlin.
Soyuz 11 had been returning from a successful docking with the Salyut 1 space station, on which the cosmonauts had spent 22 days before returning to Earth. Faced with the failure of both of its missions to Salyut 1, the USSR abandoned the station, which was allowed to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere when it fell out of orbit. No further manned missions were attempted for over two years, when the crew of the redesigned Soyuz spacecraft was reduced to two to allow room for them to wear air-tight space suits during take-off and landing. Although there have been other accidents and near misses, no Soviet cosmonaut has since died in the Soyuz programme.
Fifty killed in Soviet cosmodrome explosion
18 March 1980
An explosion during the fuelling of a Vostok-2M booster rocket killed 50 workers at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Soviet Union, 500 miles north of Moscow. An official investigation blamed ground crew for breaking fire safety rules. But when an almost identical accident was narrowly averted a year later, it was revealed that the culprit was a valve that, when in contact with hydrogen peroxide, sparked off an explosive chain reaction.
Space shuttle Challenger explodes
before worldwide TV audience
28 January 1986
Watched by a worldwide audience on live television, the US space shuttle Challenger, which had previously flown nine successful space missions, exploded just 73 seconds after takeoff on 28 January 1986. As well as commander Dick Scobee, pilot Michael J Smith, Greg Jarvis, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka and Judith Resnik, Challenger’s crew included Christa McAuliffe, who had been chosen from more than 11,000 applicants to be the first teacher to fly in space.
The tragedy was the result of a faulty O-ring seal, which allowed the white-hot exhaust gases from Challenger's huge launch rockets to penetrate its booster rocket mountings – and ultimately to ignite the main fuel tank. It was later revealed that engineers at Morton Thiokol, responsible for the construction of the solid rocket booster, had realised that there was a major problem and tried to prevent the shuttle’s launch, but their warnings had been ignored by the company’s management and by NASA.
Chinese Long March rocket crashes
on takeoff
15 February 1996
The official report from the People’s Republic of China says that six people were killed and 57 injured when a Chinese Long March 3B rocket crashed two seconds after takeoff at the Xichang satellite launch centre. Unofficial reports described widespread damage and a very much higher death toll in China's worst space-related disaster, which may actually have been worse than the Soviet catastrophe of October 1960.
Europe's Ariane 5 explodes after lift-off
4 June 1996
Forty seconds after lift-off at the Kourou Space Centre in French Guiana, the European Space Agency's unmanned Ariane 5 rocket exploded. It had been the rocket's first launch, following a 10-year development programme costing $7 billion. The disaster was blamed on a tiny error in the rocket’s computer software.
The explosion also destroyed the four Cluster satellites on board, intended to carry out a detailed investigation of the magnetosphere between the Earth and the Sun. Scientists watched in disbelief as a decade of work blew up in front of them.
The abortive Ariane 5 project had already cost the lives of two workers at Kourou on 5 May 1995, when Luc Celle and Jean-Claude Dhainaut had been asphyxiated by nitrogen gas during an inspection of a nitrogen/cold water pipe exchanger. The cause was a missing drain plug.
Space shuttle Columbia breaks up on
re-entry
1 February 2003
Returning to Earth after a successful 16-day mission, the space shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry as a result of damage to its thermal insulation system sustained during takeoff. Investigations after the tragedy showed that a piece of insulation foam had come away from a fuel tank and collided with the underside of the shuttle's left wing. This had caused unnoticed structural damage that led to the ultimate break-up of the shuttle under the intense stresses of re-entry. The seven crew members – commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool and mission specialists Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon – were all killed.
In its final report on the disaster, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board was highly critical of NASA’s decision-making and risk-assessment. The space agency had become complacent about the damage caused by debris strikes like those caused by the insulation foam on Columbia, which should have been taken much more seriously and investigated while the shuttle was in orbit. If it had been, the danger might have been recognised and the damage fixed so that the shuttle and its crew could have survived.
Brazilian rocket disaster kills 21
22 August 2003
Following an electrical malfunction, the Brazilian Space Agency VLS-3 rocket exploded on the launch pad at the Alcântara air base. The rocket, with two satellites on board, had been just days away from launch. At least 21 engineers and technicians were killed in the explosion.
