Featured

As Boris Volnyov watched the flames lapping at the blunt nose of his Soyuz spacecraft, he felt certain that death was near. With his heat shield out of position, the 5,000 degree heat outside would soon consume him. He could already smell the burning of the rubber seals which held the spacecraft’s hatch in place. And, wearing no spacesuit, Volnyov was himself beginning to feel the uncomfortably hot inside the crew compartment.

Alone, his fuel spent, and with nothing left to do, the cosmonaut began writing and recording notes—his final thoughts.

This wasn’t the first trouble Volnyov had experienced as a cosmonaut. From the beginning, Volnyov had difficulties, despite his unquestionable ability. Largely, this was because the Soviet Politburo didn’t like Volnyov’s lineage: his mother was Jewish.

Volnyov had been selected to command the first Voskhod mission, the first manned flight of the Soviet Union’s 2-man craft. He was removed from the crew three days before the flight by the government, who had just discovered the cosmonaut’s Jewish roots. Nonetheless, Volnyov kept his job as a cosmonaut and was re-assigned to a future flight, Voskhod 3.

Cosmonaut Boris Volnyov

After a year of training, he lost that mission, too. The flight was cancelled as the Soviet space program accelerated its concentration on their new Soyuz spacecraft, which they hoped would put a Russian on the moon before the Americans got there.

Finally, in January 1969, Volnyov had his flight. He commanded Soyuz 5. He did a brilliant job, successfully performing a rendezvous and docking with Soyuz 4. Next, he helped his two crew members suit up for a spacewalk over to the other spacecraft. When this was accomplished, there were three cosmonauts in Soyuz 4 and Volnyov was alone in Soyuz 5.

With Volnyov’s help, the Soviet Union had achieved two “firsts”: the first docking of two manned spacecraft; and the first crew transfer in space.

Soyuz 4 returned to earth, and Volnyov was scheduled to bring his craft home next. That’s when things started going wrong.

The Soyuz spacecraft is composed of three “modules”: Volnyov occupied the Descent Module, the only part of the space raft designed to return to the earth. This module was set between the Equipment Module and an Orbital Module.

In the case of Soyuz 5, the Equipment Module failed to separate. This put everything out of alignment and caused Volnyov’s heat shield to face the wrong way.

As he continued his uncontrolled descent, the cosmonaut thought about his 34th birthday, which he’d celebrated with friends at his Moscow apartment just a few weeks earlier. Now, he assumed that would be his last birthday.

Meanwhile, at the Soviet mission control, the ground team had drawn the same dismal conclusion. A military man took off his hat, put three rubles in it and passed it around . They were taking a collection for Boris Volnyov’s presumed widow, Tamara. One ground controller, in despair, buried his face in his hands.

Crews of Soyuz 4 and 5. Volnyov is on the right

Suddenly, the situation changed. The Equipment Module broke free. The heat had burned through the connectors from that module faster than through Volnyov’s cabin. The spacecraft spun around, putting the heat shield in the proper position. Volnyov’s Soyuz would not burn up.

He was, however, still approaching the ground at an alarming speed. The parachutes deployed—imperfectly—slowing the craft somewhat, but not nearly to what was needed. And, when Soyuz 5  hit the ground, hundreds of miles off course, the retro-rockets designed to cushion the landing failed to fire.

The spacecraft landed in a snow bank, but it still hit hard. Volnyov survived, although he was badly shaken and lost several teeth. He was bleeding badly. And his troubles were not yet over. He opened the hatch and found himself in a desolate landscape, and the temperature was minus 40 degrees farenheit.

Volnyov saw a thin plume of smoke in the distance. He walked toward it.

Hours later, a rescue team located Soyuz 5, but not its pilot. Following a trail of blood stains in the snow, the team came to a peasant’s cabin and found Volnyov had been protected and cared for by a kindly stranger.

The Soviet government ordered Volnynov to keep the problems with Soyuz 5 a secret. The cosmonaut participated in a parade celebrating Soviet space achievements, along with other cosmonauts and Premier Brezhnev. Even here, Volnyov wasn’t safe.

An assassin, aiming for Brezhnev fired his gun wildly, missing Brezhnev but hitting the care in which Volnyov was riding. The driver was killed, but the gunman was quickly apprehended.

Boris Volnyov actually got a second spaceflight. Apparently, either feeling lucky or shrugging off his previous close call, he commanded Soyuz 21 in July 1976. When fellow cosmonaut Vitaliy Zholobov became ill, the mission to the Salyut 5 space station was cut short. They would return to earth instead.

But something, again, went wrong. Volnyov found himself unable to undock from the space station. He fired the engines in an effort to get free, but only succeed in becoming partly free. This lasted for 90 minutes before some emergency procedures successfully resolved the situation. Like Soyuz 5, this mission also made a hard landing. But Volnyov (and Zholobov) again survived.

Years later, recalled his near-death experience aboard Soyuz 5, Volnyov said: “There was no fear but a deep-cutting and very clear desire to live on when there was no chance left.”