Soyuz 11 Disaster

With the landing of Apollo 11 on the Moon on July 20, 1969, the Soviets officially lost the race for the moon. So, they turned their attention in another direction, towards constructing space stations, a task they became quite good at, but not without problems. The first ever space station, Salyut 1 was launched on April 19, 1971.

Georgi Dobrovolski, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev launched aboard Soyuz 11 on June 6, 1971, bound for Salyut 1. There were a number of problems with the mission and the 30 day trip was cut short to 24 days. Then, disaster struck.

Learn more about Soyuz 11.

Image Credit: NASA

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