April 23, 2013
Categories: History, Russia, Soyuz

April 23, 1967 – Soyuz-1 spacecraft was launched into orbit. Hero of the Soviet Union Vladimir Komarov was a test pilot.

Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov was born in Moscow on March 16, 1927, where he grew up along with his sister Matilde. At the age of fifteen in 1942, Komarov entered the “1st Moscow Special Air Force School” to pursue his dream of becoming an aviator.

In September 1959, Komarov was promoted to engineer-captain and invited to participate in the selection process for cosmonaut candidate along with approximately 3,000 other pilots. He was one of only 20 candidates selected for “Air Force Group One”.

Unfortunately Vladimir Komarov didn’t enter the group of six, trained for the first ever mission to space. And nevertheless he became the first. He was the first to test Voskhod-1 spacecraft in October 1964.

And in 1966 Komarov was assigned to the Soviet  Soyuz program along with Yuri Gagarin and Alexey Leonov. Vladimir was selected to command the Soyuz-1, in 1967, with Gagarin as his backup cosmonaut. And on April 23 Soyuz-1 was launched into orbit. After completion of variuos checks ant tests he successfully re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on his 19th orbit, but the module’s drogue and main braking parachute failed to deploy correctly and the module crashed into the ground, killing Komarov.

On April 26, 1967, Komarov was given a state funeral in Moscow, and his ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis at Red Square. After this flight Vladimir Komarov was posthumously awarded his second Order of Lenin and also the Order of Hero of the Soviet Union.

More from this category:
November 12, 2013

At 23.46 UTC on November 11 (03.46 Moscow time, November 12) Proton-M booster with Briz-M upper stage and Raduga-M military satellite was launched by Aerospace…

full story
May 27, 2019

The “Soyuz-2.1b” launch vehicle with the “Glonass-M” navigation satellite launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome. The launch was performed at 09:23 am (Moscow time) by the…

full story
Launch vehicle "package" has been assembled at Baikonur cosmodrome for the upcoming manned launch
July 27, 2022

Specialists of Yuzhny Space Center (a branch of Center for Operation of Space Ground Based Infrastructure (a branch of Roskosmos State Corporation) continue preparing Soyuz-2.1a…

full story
September 15, 2021

A successful launch of 34 OneWeb satellites aboard the Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle with the Fregat upper stage was executed on Tuesday, September 14, at 18:07…

full story
June 6, 2018

Today on June 6, 2018 at 14:12 (Moscow time) at Baikonur cosmodrome from the launchpad № 1 (“Gagarinsky start”) launched a carrier rocket “Soyuz-FG” with…

full story
February 18, 2015

On February 17, 2015 at 19.57, Moscow time Progress M-26M cargo vehicle successfully docked with Zvezda service module of Russian ISS segment. Operations on automated…

full story
June 10, 2014

On June 9, 21.23, Moscow time, Progress M-21M cargo space vehicle debris sank in non-navigational region of the Southern part of the Pacific Ocean. At…

full story
August 26, 2019

On August 26, the “Soyuz MS-13” spacecraft was successfully redocked from the “Zvezda” service module to the “Poisk” small research module of the Russian segment…

full story