A Brief History
On June 29, 1971, the first human space travelers to die while in space perished when their Soyuz 11 space capsule depressurized after leaving the Soviet space station, Salyut 1.
Digging Deeper
Salyut 1 was the first space station launched into orbit around the Earth in April of 1971, and despite its then groundbreaking technology, only lasted less than 6 months, of which humans occupied it for a total of 24 days.
Soviet cosmonauts Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev had become the first ever spacemen to occupy a space station, from June 7th to June 29th, 1971. A previous Soviet attempt to enter Salyut 1 had failed.
Fortunately, these three Soviet heroes remain the only humans that have died while in space, the other space related fatalities having occurred within Earth’s atmosphere or on the ground.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Evans, Ben. Foothold in the Heavens: The Seventies. Praxis, 2010.
Ivanovich, Grujica. Salyut – The First Space Station: Triumph and Tragedy. Praxis, 2008.
The featured image in this article, an image of a postage stamp from United Arab Emirates, is in the public domain both in United Arab Emirates and in other countries adhering to international copyright treaties, because, though the 2002 copyright law of the United Arab Emirates states that such works as stamps are protected for 50 years starting from 1 January of the publication year, the 1992 copyright law (DOC) gave a 25 years copyright protection (starting from the publication date). Therefore all UAE postage stamps printed before 1977 are in public domain.
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