Britt Jones
A cosmonaut's final transmission before he fell from space to his death was released to the public and it shows how he felt about the harrowing mission.
The space race between the Soviet Union and the US was no joke in the 60s, but sadly, it may have led to the early death of a decorated cosmonaut on what was supposed to be an achievement like no other.
It happened on 23 April 1967, just before the 50th anniversary of the Communist Revolution, the Soyuz 1 spacecraft began its first crewed spaceflight, with Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov leading the mission.
However, the space program would go on to mark the mission as a shadow on Russia and its attempt to advance its technology.
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Apparently, Russia had rushed the space flight, even though it wasn't ready to go ahead.
“The [Soviet] designers faced immense political pressure for a new space spectacular,” wrote Francis French in In The Shadow of the Moon. “Soyuz was being rushed into service before all the problems had been ironed out.”
Komarov would soon become known as the 'man who fell from space', and his final words were alleged in a 2011 book called Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin.
While the book has been slated by critics for containing 'errors', reports by NASA say that Komarov made 16 orbits around the Earth in his spacecraft because he was struggling to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere after one of his two solar panels that supplied energy for the maneuver failed to deploy.
Not only did one of the solar panels failed to deploy and was wrapped around the service module, he could not manoeuvre the spacecraft because of ‘interference of the reaction control system exhaust with the ion flow sensors’.
These sensors were one of the main methods of orientation, which led to the decision being made to bring Komarov back to Earth, and while re-entry was fine… his landing was not.
When he reached an altitude of 23,000 feet, Komarov’s parachute that was meant to deploy, but when he deployed his drag chute to slow his decent down, a failure of a pressure sensor meant that the main parachute did not deploy, and the reserve chute became tangled with the drag chute.
Out of options, Komarov had no choice but to wait for his quick death as he hurdled down to Earth.
With no way to stop his fast crash to Earth, the cosmonaut plummeted to the ground and was killed in an explosion on 24 April, 1967.
Tragically, Komarov knew he was about to die as his final words were overheard by the US listening posts in Turkey.
He was clearly enraged talking to Alexei Kosygin, then a high ranking official of the Soviet Union, as his aircraft came crashing down.
His charred remains resembled a ‘lump’ and only his heelbone was recognisable, according to reports.
The audio is from that truly terrifying moment, as Starman claims he also said: "This devil ship! Nothing I lay my hands on works properly.”
However, experts are skeptical of this, while reading the official transcript of Komarov’s final moments from the Russian State Archive, one of the last things he told colleagues was: “I feel excellent, everything’s in order.”
Just a few moments later, he reportedly said: “Thank you for transmitting all of that. [Separation] occurred.”