Space is brutally inhospitable to human life, so it's a small wonder that out of the 561 people who have ventured beyond the safety of Earth, only three have died there. Five times as many have perished due to crashes or explosions when rocketing away from our planet or re-entering its atmosphere.
The three brave spacefarers who lost their lives in space were cosmonauts Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev. All three died on the Soyuz 11 mission of Jun 1971.
An extremely rare view of the world's first space station, the Soviet Salyut 1, as seen from the departing Soyuz 11.
Viktor Patsayev
While Soyuz 11 ended in sadness, the vast majority of the mission progressed gloriously. Dobrovolsky, Volkov, and Patsayev lived aboard Russia's Salyut 1 Space Station, the very first space station, for twenty-three days, setting the record for the longest stay in outer space at the time. During their mission, the bold cosmonauts wowed Russians back on Earth with live television broadcasts, projecting hope and depicting a bright future. Patsayev also became the first man to operate a telescope in space. The spectrograms he produced of the stars Vega and Beta Centauri with the station's ultraviolet telescope were later published in the journal Nature.
