Mar 27 2003

From The Space Library

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Current revision

On the 35th anniversary of the accident that killed Yuri Gagarin, the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda published extracts of a secret investigation of Russia's KGB (the Soviet-era Office of State Security) into the cause of the Soviet cosmonaut's death. Gagarin and his instructor had died on 27 March 1968, during a routine training exercise at the Chkalovsky Air Base outside Moscow. The government had ordered three official investigations, one by the civilian government and two military, but all three had ruled out sabotage. An inspection of Gagarin's MiG- 15 had identified no mechanical failures and investigators had concluded that the fighter “went into a spin after either hitting birds or suddenly swerving to avoid a weather balloon or another aircraft.” The circumstances of his death had since “been cloaked in mystery and rumours that the Communist Party had Gagarin killed because of his love of drink and women.” The KGB's counterintelligence unit had conducted its own secret investigation, finding that ground staff's actions had “amounted to a 'dangerous violation' of standing instructions,” leading to the death of Gagarin and his instructor. (Ben Aris, “KGB Held Ground Staff To Blame for Gagarin's Death,” Daily Telegraph (UK), 28 March 2003.

Investigators of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident stated that the recently recovered Orbital Experiment Support System, which stored data about temperature, aerodynamic pressure, vibration, and other variables, appeared to contain information up to a fraction of a second before the orbiter broke apart over Texas. Technicians had located a time tag on the tape indicating that it had stored data until 9:00:18 a.m. (EST) on 1 February. 400" "400 Kathy Sawyer, “Columbia's Last Seconds Recorded,” Washington Post, 28 March 2003"

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