Failed Space Missions

As exciting as space missions are to read about, watch and follow there is no escaping the fact that space is a dangerous place and space travel is difficult to prepare for. As Richard Branson once helpfully pointed out, it literally is “rocket science”. Because of the very nature of space and space travel, there have been a few disasters.

Some are not as serious as others of course – the Hubble Space Telescope is one such 'failed'  project. The HST works perfectly well now of course, but it wasn't always the case. When the telescope was sent into space, one of the lenses shifted and another had to be fitted to compensate for the minute change.

That mission eventually turned out well, but not all of them end so happily.

The Columbia Space Disaster, 2003

After spending 3 weeks aboard the world’s first space station, the Salyut-1, 3 cosmonauts became the only people to die while still in space. Everything seemed to have gone according to plan until they embarked on their return journey to Earth.

On June 30th, 1971, the spacecraft made what seemed to be a normal reentry and a textbook landing.

However, ground operatives that went to greet the cosmonauts and take them ‘home’ found all three cosmonauts unconscious and unresponsive.



During descent, a faulty air vent had popped open and led to the depressurisation of the cabin. None of the crew was wearing their spacesuits and it is likely their deaths were due to suffocation. After this disaster, it became a requirement of all cosmonauts,  and astronauts, to always wear their space suits where depressurisation may be a possibility.

The Glory satellite failure, 2011

In May of 2011, NASA launched a climate satellite named Glory – costing $424 million – that was mean to track Earth’s climate.

Problems were encountered almost as soon as the Taurus XL rocket, which was carrying the satellite, entered the atmosphere. The nose cone of the rocket failed to separate, and while it is not certain where the rocket ended up, it is thought that it probably fell into the Pacific Ocean.

A similar issue occurred on another Taurus rocket in 2009, this too led to a NASA climate mission failure – the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. This rocket, complete with satellite cargo, crashed into the southern Pacific Ocean. After this mission failure, the rocket makers (Orbital Sciences Corp. thought they had solved the problem the rockets were having.

Voskhod 2, 1965

Many people may know of the Voskhod 2 debacle. While not technically a failed mission (the cosmonauts managed to return home, eventually) it is still a tale of technical failure, as well as human endeavour that could easily have ended in tragedy.

The mission itself is also famous for being the very first to include a spacewalk. The space mission was successfully completed, but it was the reentry that proved to be catastrophic

March 19th, 1965, saw  Alexey Leonov and Pavel Belyayev complete a 12-minute spacewalk before attempting reentry in their capsule. The capsule was designed to land automatically, it should have been relatively straightforward. The automated system failed, however, forcing the cosmonauts to land manually.

After eventually landing, a long-distance north of where they were meant to land, they spent 2 nights in a forest chopping wood and building a campfire to keep warm.



They were finally recovered and returned to the General Secretary to declare their success in person.

Some failed missions involve a monetary cost and not lives

Some 18 people have been killed in space mission failures, and given the inherent risks and dangers, this number is very low.



As technologies and procedures improve and change, space flight is getting safer… Let's hope there are no more fatalities on the way to exploring the stars.