On April 24, 1967, the Soviets mourned deeply as their skilled Cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, died painfully after failing to get any help.
He met his sad end when his spacecraft, Soyuz I, crashed during landing after his parachute failed to deploy.
Komarov, a skilled fighter pilot and aeronautical engineer, was undertaking a crucial mission amidst the intense space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. This event occurred in the wake of a previous tragedy in the U.S. space program earlier in the same year when Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chafee, NASA astronauts in the Apollo program, lost their lives in a ground test accident.
Having embarked on his first space journey in 1964, Komarov was already a seasoned cosmonaut by the time of his ill-fated 1967 voyage. After 24 hours and 16 orbits around the Earth, he encountered difficulties controlling the spacecraft and failed to initiate the rocket brakes necessary for safe reentry. It took two additional orbits before he could attempt to re-enter the Earth.
As Soyuz I descended to 23,000 feet, a parachute malfunction occurred, with the lines becoming tangled during the craft's reentry struggles. With no backup chute available and no other help in sight, Komarov's landing became fatal as he plunged to the ground and died.
Komarov's untimely death sparked widespread mourning in Moscow, with his ashes buried in the Kremlin wall. Sadly, his wife was not informed of the Soyuz I launch until after Komarov was already in orbit, depriving her of the chance to bid farewell to her husband.
Not minding the deaths, risks, and other setbacks, both the Soviet Union and the United States carried on with their space exploration endeavors. Just two years later, the U.S. achieved the historical feat of landing astronauts on the moon.