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1971: Soyuz 11 At the end of their mission aboard Soyuz 11, cosmonauts Viktor Patsayev, Georgi Dobrovolsky, and Vladislav Volkov fired the explosive bolts to separate the re-entry capsule from the other stage of their spacecraft. The explosion knocked open a valve. One hundred miles above the Earth, the capsule was suddenly exposed to the surrounding low pressure of space. Patsayev tried to close the valve by hand but failed. Air inside the spacecraft quickly leaked away, causing an abrupt loss of pressure and the death of all three cosmonauts.
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Soyuz spacecraft
Soyuz 11 crash site: rescuers giving CPR to
cosmonauts.