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The valve that opened in descent and bled their air before landing
A Soyuz capsule lands on the Kazakh steppe; rescuers find three cosmonauts dead - did a pressure valve fail during descent?
The valve that opened in descent and bled their air before landing
In this episode, we tell how a routine return from Salyut one ended with a silent, sealed capsule and three dead cosmonauts. What sequence of technical choices and in-flight decisions created a situation where the crew had no suits and no obvious way to survive a loss of cabin atmosphere?
Mission: Soyuz eleven
Date: June 30, 1971
Location: Kazakh steppe
Crew: Georgy Dobrovolsky; Vladislav Volkov; Viktor…
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