When dealing with air and space travel, you must be prepared for everything. During the course of history, there have been many (un)successful attempts at rocket launches, aircraft production, space exploration and similar.
Today, we’ll be going over 10 accidents that have happened in space and resulted in near fatal or fatal events. Without further ado, let’s get right into it!
10) Decompression of the Soyuz 11 Capsule
9) Freeman’s Training Jet Crash
Theodore Cordy Freeman was an American astronaut, who was also NASA’s first Astronaut Corpse fatality. During his landing training, a goose hit his trainer jet, causing the engines to go on fire. The jet instantly started losing altitude at rapid speeds. Witnesses have said that Freeman has ejected his seat from the jet, but he was too close to the ground for his parachute to deploy. He died from the impact when he crashed into the ground.
8) World’s First Spacewalk Gone Wrong
7) Apollo 12 Struck By A Lightning…Twice
During the launch of the Apollo 12 capsule, there was a lightning strike that knocked three whole fuel cells offline. Shortly after, another strike took place, this time putting offline the orbital guidance system. Some other systems experienced temporary failures, but everything managed to get itself back up. Astronauts Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, and Dick Gordon managed to depart for the moon and become the 2nd group of people to ever land there.
6) Soyuz 23 Goes Underwater
5) Astronaut’s Space Suit Gets Punctured
During Jay Apt’s spacewalk in 1991, a small bar punctured his suit, which is obviously quite dangerous. Luckily for him, his hand somehow conformed the puncture and basically sealed it, so no depressurization happened. Dr. Apt has later on confirmed that one of his fingers had an abrasion behind its knuckle, but that was the only wound he sustained.
4) Eye Injury During A Training On A Space Station
3) First Astronaut Ever Dies In A Training Jet
Yuri Gagarin was a Soviet astronaut who go on to become the first man in space. In April 1961, his Vostok spacecraft successfully completed an orbit around the Earth, making Gagarin the first ever human to journey into outer space. Predictably, Yuri Gagarin became a huge celebrity and won many awards thanks to his expedition. In March 1968, both him and a training instructor, Vladimir Seryogin, died in a training jet crash. Their MiG-15UTI that Gagarin was piloting crashed and instantly killed both men.
2) 2014 VSS Enterprise Crash
1) Small Mistake Becomes The First Ever Space-Related Fatality
Just three weeks before Yuri Gagarin’s space expedition, his colleague Vladimir Bordarenko made a small mistake that would cost him his life. While he was working at an experiment in a low-pressure altitude chamber with at least 50% oxygen atmosphere, he dropped a cotton cloth soaked in alcohol onto an electric hot plate. He suffered sever burns, and died in the hospital 16 hours after the accident. A crater on the Moon was named in his honor.