Over the relatively short history of astronautics, spacecraft crashes and accidents have occurred both in orbit and not far from the Earth. There were depressurization and even collisions in the vastness of space.
Juno. 50/50
Every second attempt by the Americans to launch a launch vehicle from the Juno series ended in failure. So, on July 16, 1959, "Juno-2" was supposed to deliver the "Explorer S-1" satellite to near-earth orbit. Mission "Juno" lasted for several seconds: after launch, it almost immediately turned 180 degrees and began to move in the opposite direction, moving exactly to the launch pad. The rocket was successfully detonated in the air, thereby preventing numerous human casualties. For the sake of fairness, we note: with the help of "Juno-1" the Americans managed to launch their first artificial Earth satellite.
Black date
June 30 is a "black" date in the history of space exploration. On this day in 1971, the Soyuz-11 crew returned to earth on time after 23 days of work in space. The bodies of the ship's commander Georgy Dobrovolsky, flight engineer Vladislav Volkov and test engineer Viktor Patsaev were found in the ship's cabin, which had slowly descended by parachute and landed on the ground.
According to eyewitnesses, the bodies of the crew members were still warm, but medical attempts to revive the cosmonauts did not give any results. Later it was found that the tragedy occurred as a result of a cabin depressurization. The drop in pressure at an altitude of 168 kilometers in the absence of special spacesuits, not provided for by the ship's design, doomed the crew to a terrible death. Only such a tragedy made it necessary to radically reconsider the approach to ensuring the safety of Soviet cosmonauts during the flight.
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The crash of the "upsnik"
The start of the satellite race is considered to be October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union was the first to launch an artificial Earth satellite. The United States planned to win back with the Avangard TV3 rocket.
Reporters from the largest mass media were invited to the launch pad on December 6. They had to record "achievements" and inform the public about them, which was in a dejected state after the victories of the Land of the Soviets. After the start, Avangard gained a height of just over a meter and … fell to the ground. The powerful explosion destroyed the missile and severely damaged the launch pad. The next day, the front pages of the newspapers were full of headlines about the collapse of "upsnik" - as journalists called "Avangard". Naturally, the demonstration of failure only increased the panic in society.
Collision of satellites
The first collision of artificial satellites - the Russian "Cosmos-2251" and the American "Iridium-33" - occurred on February 10, 2009. As a result of the complete destruction of both satellites, about 600 debris began to pose a threat to other vehicles operating in space, in particular to the ISS. Fortunately, a new tragedy was avoided - in 2012, a maneuver of the Russian Zvezda module helped the ISS evade the debris of Iridium-33.
No casualties
Cynical reasoning about the "spectacularity" of the explosion is possible, perhaps, only in those cases when we are not talking about human casualties. An attempt to launch a Delta-2 carrier rocket with a military GPS satellite at Cape Canaveral is one "successful" example.
The launch scheduled for January 16, 1997 had to be postponed for a day, and, despite the fact that the weather conditions did not improve on the 17th, the rocket was nevertheless launched. It stayed in the air for only 13 seconds, after which it exploded. Fiery sparks, reminiscent of traces of fireworks, rained down on the surroundings for some time. Fortunately, human casualties were avoided. Most of the fragments of the rocket fell into the ocean, others damaged the bunker of the launch control center and about 20 cars in the parking lot.
The tragedy of "Titan"
The question of which country in the entire history of space exploration has suffered large financial losses remains open today. The fact is that 1986 was a black year for NASA. The whole world has not yet had time to recover from the tragic death of the Challenger shuttle crew on January 28, when the Titan 34D-9 rocket exploded during the launch on April 18.
Its mission was to become part of the implementation of a multi-billion dollar program to create a network of reconnaissance satellites. Additional funding was also required for the elimination of the accident due to the spread of poisonous self-igniting fuel components. But Russia just last year lost about $ 90 million due to the unsuccessful July launch of the Proton-M rocket at the Baikonur cosmodrome.
A disaster on a Brazilian scale
The launch of the VLS-3 rocket could occupy the leading positions in three ratings at once: "The largest number of victims", "Unjustified hopes" and "Mysterious reasons". Appointed for August 25, 2003, it could turn Brazil into the number one space power in Latin America.
However, on August 22, at the stage of final testing, one of the engines was accidentally turned on, which led to a fire and an explosion of fuel tanks. The disaster not only destroyed the rocket and the grand launch complex, but also claimed the lives of 21 people, almost completely paralyzing the country's space program. As a result of a full-scale investigation, the exact causes of the explosion were never established. According to the official version, the tragedy happened due to "a dangerous concentration of volatile gases, damaged sensors and electromagnetic interference."