The road to any success is paved with failures and the lessons we learn from our mistakes. Spaceflight is no exception, even though today it is relatively safe – at least if we compare this safety to the early days of cosmic exploration. To date, slightly over 600 people, including civilian tourists, have ventured beyond our planet’s atmosphere, but how many astronauts have died in space?
You may be surprised, but the exact number will depend on how pedantic you want to get with the definition. If by ‘space,’ we mean the Karman line, a generally accepted border after which space begins, the answer is three. But, of course, the list of astronauts who died in space missions somewhat closer to the ground is longer, so let’s remember the major disasters and the lives they claimed.
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Early USSR Soyuz fatalities
The first official death on a spaceflight occurred in 1967. The Soyuz 1 mission was plagued by technical problems from the start. Launched on April 23, 1967, it was meant to test the new Soviet Soyuz spacecraft and potentially rendezvous with Soyuz 2 (which never launched due to technical issues). Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov experienced multiple system failures in orbit. Upon re-entry, the main parachute failed to deploy properly, the spacecraft crashed into Earth at high speed, and the pilot died on impact.
Soyuz 11 mission also ended in tragedy, and to this date, three cosmonauts who died on this flight are the only official casualties beyond our planet’s atmosphere. Space news resources Orbital Today explains that Soyuz 11’s crew successfully lived and worked aboard the Salyut 1 space station, marking a major milestone in long-duration spaceflight.
However, tragedy struck during their return on June 30, 1971. A pressure-equalization valve in their descent module opened prematurely during the separation of the orbital module, causing the cabin to depressurise in the cosmic vacuum. By the time the landing capsule touched down on Earth, all three cosmonauts had died from asphyxiation.
NASA shuttle crashes
There are a total of 14 astronauts who died in space shuttle crashes, seven crew members for each crash – Challenger and Columbia.
On January 28, 1986, Challenger was lost just 73 seconds after lift-off due to the failure of an O-ring seal in a solid rocket booster. The breach allowed a flame jet to impinge on the external fuel tank, causing the shuttle to break apart at high altitudes but below the generally accepted cosmic boundary.
This tragedy was additionally marked by public scandal as the launch and the subsequent explosion were live-streaming on TV, as well as the new anti-record of two female astronauts who died in a space mission: Judith Resnik, a trained NASA astronaut, and Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher selected for the Teacher in Space programme.
Columbia shuttle disintegrated during re-entry on February 1, 2003, after a piece of insulation from the fuel tank struck the left wing at launch. This created a breach, allowing superheated gases to enter the wing structure upon re-entry, ultimately causing the orbiter to break apart over the southwestern United States.
Test flights & launch site accidents
Over the decades, numerous astronauts and cosmonauts have also died during training exercises, test flights of aircraft, and other pre-mission activities. For example, Soviet cosmonauts Valentin Bondarenko and Yuri Gagarin died in accidents related to training and aviation incidents—though these were not mission fatalities.
Similarly, astronaut Clifton C. Williams died in a plane crash en route to NASA facilities, and other astronauts passed away in T-38 jet training accidents. These tragedies, while deeply felt, are not typically classified as deaths during spaceflight missions.
Apollo 1 launch site also claimed the lives of three astronauts as they were preparing for a mission. Like most other accidents, this 1967 tragedy made engineers reevaluate their safety standards – for example, astronauts’ chambers at the time were filled with pure oxygen, which is highly flammable. From then on, the capsules have been filled with a combination of oxygen and nitrogen, similar to the ‘ordinary’ air we breathe every day – and this mixture, as we all know, does not carry fire so easily.
This, along with many other improvements introduced after tragedies, has made today’s spaceflights way safer than they used to be. Besides, on a larger scale, relatively few people have lost their lives on missions. Today, we do not even have an answer as to what happens to astronauts who died in space. And if we’re lucky, we will not have to figure it out any time soon, even if civilian spaceflight becomes common.
Perhaps, if one day we start colonising other planets and actually relocating people to cosmic bases, we will need to consider these inevitable matters. But so far, astronauts who died in space 2003 shuttle crash are the last official victims of manned spaceflight.
Every space mission, with its triumphs and tragedies, honors the courage of those who dared to explore the unknown — a tribute to their legacy and the lessons we continue to learn. Credit to Emma Thorpe for shedding light on these remarkable journeys.
