Details of Yuri Gagarin's tragic death
revealed
17 June 2013, by Jason Major, Universe Today
later, details about what really happened to cause
the death of the first man in space have come
out—from the first man to go out on a spacewalk,
no less.
According to an article published online today on
Russia Today (RT.com) former cosmonaut Aleksey
Leonov—who performed the first EVA on March 18,
1965—has revealed details about the accident that
killed both Yuri Gagarin and his flight instructor
Vladimir Seryogin in March 1968.
Officially the cause of the crash was said to be the
ill-fated result of an attempt to avoid a foreign
object during flight training in their MiG-15UTI, a
two-seated, dual-controlled training version of the
widely-produced Soviet aircraft. "Foreign objects"
could be anything, from balloons to flocks of birds
to airborne debris to… well, you see where one
could go with that. (And over the years many have.)
Yuri Gagarin on the way to his historic Vostok launch on
April 12, 1961. Credit: NASA Images
The maneuver led to the aircraft going into a
tailspin and crashing, killing both men. But
experienced pilots like Gagarin and Seryogin
shouldn't have lost control of their plane like
On the morning of April 12, 1961, Soviet
that—not according to Leonov, who has been trying
cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin lifted off aboard Vostok 1 to release details of the event for the past 20
to become the first human in space, spending 108 years… if only that the pilots' families might know
minutes in orbit before landing via parachute in the the truth.
Saratov region of the USSR. The soft-spoken and
well-mannered Gagarin, just 27 years old at the
Now, a declassified report, which Leonov has been
time, became an instant hero, representing the
permitted to share, shows what actually happened
success of the Soviet space program (Alan
during the training flight: an "unauthorized Su-15
Shepard's shorter, suborbital flight happened less fighter" flew too close to Gagarin's MiG, disrupting
than a month later) to the entire world. Gagarin
its flight and sending it into a spin.
later went on to become a director for the
Cosmonaut Training Center and was preparing for "In this case, the pilot didn't follow the book,
a second space flight. Tragically, he was killed
descending to an altitude of 450 meters," Leonov
when a MiG-15 aircraft he was piloting crashed on says in the RT.com article. "While afterburning the
March 27, 1968.
aircraft reduced its echelon at a distance of 10-15
meters in the clouds, passing close to Gagarin,
Gagarin's death has long been shrouded by
turning his plane and thus sending it into a
confusion and controversy, with many theories
tailspin—a deep spiral, to be precise—at a speed of
proposed as to the actual cause. Now, 45 years
750 kilometers per hour."
1/2
The pilot of the Su-15—who is still alive—was was
not named, a condition of Leonov's permission to
share the information.
According to first woman in space Valentina
Tereshkova, who was officially grounded by the
government after Gagarin's death to avoid a loss of
another prominent cosmonaut, the details come as
a bittersweet relief.
"The only regret here is that it took so long for the
truth to be revealed," Tereshkova said. "But we can
finally rest easy."
Source: Universe Today
APA citation: Details of Yuri Gagarin's tragic death revealed (2013, June 17) retrieved 18 June 2017
from https://phys.org/news/2013-06-yuri-gagarin-tragic-death-revealed.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
2/2
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)