Top 10 Saddest Space Flight Disasters

Houston, we have a problem. Welcome to WatchMojo.com, and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 10 Saddest Space Accidents.

For this list, we’ll be taking a look at the history of space exploration and the disasters that occurred across different countries, both in the private sector and government run programs. Whether it occurred during liftoff, re-entry or training and testing, as long as it was an accident related to aeronautics and attempts at spaceflight, it was considered for this list.

Died: March 23, 1961

As part of the very first group of men selected for cosmonaut training in 1960, Valentin Bondarenko could have been Russia’s first man in space. However, 10 days into a 15-day experiment in a low pressure altitude chamber, a fire broke out. After an alcohol soaked cotton ball he had used to clean himself landed on a hot plate, the flames quickly spread through the oxygen rich environment, leaving third-degree burns over most of his body. He died 16 hours later at just 24 years old. The Soviet government kept his death and involvement in the cosmonaut program secret for decades. A crater on the far side of the moon is named in Bondarenko’s honor.

As part of the Virgin Group, Virgin Galactic is developing a spaceplane known as SpaceShipTwo with hopes of ultimately providing commercial suborbital space flights to tourists. On Halloween 2014, the company was testing one such ship, the VSS Enterprise, in the Mojave Desert in California. Shortly after detaching from the launch vehicle, the craft began to break apart due to an unidentified in-flight anomaly. Pilot Peter Siebold was ejected from the craft, parachuted to safety and sustained non-life-threatening injuries. However, co-pilot Michael Alsbury was not able to get free of the craft and died in the crash.

After leaving MIT, US Air Force pilot Michael Adams received the A.B. Honts Trophy as the top scholar and pilot in his class at the Air Force Experimental Test Pilot School. No doubt he was on the fast track to being an astronaut. In 1966, he joined the X-15 program, which was developing a hypersonic rocket-powered and experimental aircraft. Adams had completed six flights successfully in the X-15 prior to November 15, 1967. During his seventh and final flight, the aircraft began to spin violently at Mach 5 and entered a dive. The G-forces exerted on the craft were too much and it broke apart, killing 37-year-old Adams. The US Air Force posthumously awarded him his Astronaut Wings.

The Intelsat-708 was an American telecommunications satellite meant to be launched into orbit via China’s Long March 3B rocket. On February 15, 1996, the boosters ignited and the rocket began its ascent. However, due to an engineering defect, it veered off course within seconds and exploded over a village, lighting up the sky. The Chinese government initially reported that only six people were killed, but this was highly disputed due to eyewitness accounts and the size of the blast. No official number has ever been released, but it is most likely in the hundreds.

The Apollo program that ultimately brought the first men to the moon had a tragic beginning. The first mission, Apollo 1, was due to launch in February 1967 and bring Gus Grissom, Edward Higgins White and Roger B. Chaffee to a low earth orbit. During a routine launch rehearsal in January, a fire broke out in the cabin. It took workers five minutes to open all the hatches to get to the astronauts, but it was too late. All three men perished. The pure oxygen atmosphere combined with electric arcs from faulty wires ultimately ignited the blaze. All three were posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

The Vostok Rocket was the Soviet’s answer to America’s Atlas and Titan rockets to send men and satellites into space. On March 18, 1980, a Vostok-2M was being fueled on its launch pad at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome when it exploded. Over 40 people, mostly young soldiers, were burned to death with about half a dozen dying later due to injuries sustained in the blast. The launch pad was damaged so severely that it was not used again for four years. Due to the secrecy of the USSR government, the outside world would not learn about one of the worst disasters in the space age for nearly a decade.

The Soviet Union’s Soyuz 11 mission was the only manned mission to dock with and board the first ever space station, Salyut 1. After 22 days on board, cosmonauts Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev began their journey home. Their capsule made a textbook re-entry to earth’s atmosphere, parachuting safely to the ground. However, when the recovery opened the hatch all three men were dead. An investigation revealed that a pressure release valve malfunctioned causing a loss of cabin pressure. Since cosmonauts did not use pressure suits during this era, the men asphyxiated within seconds. The three were posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union Medal and each has a crater on the moon named in their honor.

The Vostok Rocket Explosion was not the first launch pad disaster that the Soviet Union experienced. Almost 20 years prior, in 1960, the Nedelin disaster claimed the lives of about a hundred Russian workers and soldiers. During the development of the ICBM R-16 rocket, a prototype was being prepped for a test flight at the Baikonur Cosmodrome when the second stage engines inadvertently ignited, killing countless military and technical personnel. As was the norm in Soviet Russia, the government kept the disaster under wraps for decades. The incident is named for Mitrofan Ivanovich Nedelin, commanding officer of the Soviet Union’s Strategic Rocket Forces, who was killed in the explosion.

The Space Shuttle Columbia had just finished a 16-day scientific mission orbiting the earth when it began to re-enter the atmosphere. What NASA and the Columbia didn’t know was that during takeoff, a piece of insulating foam had become dislodged and punctured a hole in one of their wings. This allowed gasses to pierce through the wing during re-entry, which slowly tore it apart and led to complete control failure. The Columbia broke apart before NASA’s eyes, killing all seven crewmembers. NASA suspended flight operations for two years. The crew was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.



Before we unveil our number one pick, here are a few honorable, or in this case, dishonorable, mentions:



Soyuz 1

April 24, 1967

Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov Killed by Parachute Failure



SpaceShipTwo Test Explosion

July 26, 2007

3 Employees Killed by Flying Shrapnel During Oxidizer Flow Test



Soviet Space Dogs

1950s – 1960s

Multiple Dogs Died During Early USSR Space Travel

With CNN broadcasting the launch, all eyes were on the Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986. The crew consisted of five astronauts and two Payload Specialists, one of whom was Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from Concord, New Hampshire who would have become the first ever teacher in space. After a handful of delays, the launch was set for the morning of January 28. 73 seconds after launch, with millions of Americans watching, the Challenger broke apart during its ascent and was gone in an instant. It was determined that an O-ring seal in the right booster failed during liftoff due to cold conditions. The shuttle program was grounded for 32 months while America mourned their first astronauts lost since the 1960s.


Do you agree with our list? Which space disaster do you feel was the most tragic? For more top 10’s published every day, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com