* Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov, (born March 16, 1927, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.—died April 24, 1967, Kazakhstan), Soviet cosmonaut, the first man known to have died during a space mission.
* Komarov joined the
Soviet air force at the
age of 15 and was educated in air force schools, becoming a pilot in 1949.
* He graduated from the
Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy, Moscow, in 1959 and was the pilot (October 12–13, 1964) of
Voskhod 1, the
first craft to carry more than one human being into space.
* Komarov became the first Russian to make two spaceflights when he blasted off alone on April 23, 1967, in Soyuz 1. During the
18th orbit he attempted a landing.
* The spacecraft became entangled in its main parachute at an altitude of several miles and fell back to Earth. Komarov’s body was cremated, and his ashes were entombed in the wall of the Kremlin.
* Soyuz, any of several versions of Soviet/Russian crewed spacecraft launched since 1967 and the longest-serving crewed-spacecraft design in use.
* Originally conceived in Soviet aerospace designer Sergey Korolyov’s design bureau (Energia) for the
U.S.S.R.’s Moon-landing program (officially canceled in 1974), the modular craft has served mainly as a crew ferry to and from Earth-orbiting space stations, specifically the Salyut stations, Mir, and the
International Space Station (ISS). * Soyuz is the Russian word for “union.”..
Source : Britannica
