List of Spaceflight-related Accidents and Incidents - Non-fatal Incidents During Spaceflight

Non-fatal Incidents During Spaceflight

Apart from actual disasters, a number of missions resulted in some very near misses and also some training accidents that nearly resulted in deaths. In-flight near misses have included various reentry mishaps (in particular on Soyuz 5), the sinking of the Mercury 4 capsule, and the Voskhod 2 crew spending a night in dense forest surrounded by wolves.

• 1961 April 12: separation failure: During the flight of Vostok 1, after retrofire, the Vostok service module unexpectedly remained attached to the reentry module by a bundle of wires. The two halves of the craft were supposed to separate ten seconds after retrofire. But they did not separate until 10 minutes after retrofire, when the wire bundle finally burned through. The spacecraft had gone through wild gyrations at the beginning of reentry, before the wires burned through and the reentry module settled into the proper reentry attitude.
• 1961 July 21: landing capsule sank in water: After Liberty Bell 7 splashed down in the Atlantic, the hatch malfunctioned and blew, filling the capsule with water and almost drowning Gus Grissom, who managed to escape before it sank. Grissom then had to deal with a spacesuit that was rapidly filling with water, but managed to get into the helicopter's retrieval collar and was lifted to safety. The spacecraft was recovered in 1999, having settled 300 nm southeast of Cape Canaveral in 15,000 ft of seawater. A SOFAR bomb designed to destroy the craft in case it sank had failed, effecting its eventual recovery.
• 1965 March 18: spacesuit or airlock design fault: Voskhod 2 featured the world's first spacewalk, by Alexei Leonov. After his twelve minutes outside, Leonov's spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum to the point where he could not reenter the airlock. He opened a valve to allow some of the suit's pressure to bleed off, and was barely able to get back inside the capsule after suffering slight effects of the bends. Because the spacecraft was so cramped, the crew could not keep to their reentry schedule and landed 386 km off course in deep forest. They had to spend a night in their capsule due to the danger of bears and wolves.
• 1966 March 17: equipment failure: Gemini 8: A maneuvering thruster refused to shut down and put their capsule into an uncontrolled spin. The g-force became so intense that astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott were possibly within seconds of blacking out when they regained control.
• 1969 January 18: separation failure: the Soyuz 5 had a harrowing reentry and landing when the capsule's service module initially refused to separate, causing the spacecraft to begin reentry faced the wrong way. The service module broke away before the capsule would have been destroyed, and so it made a rough but survivable landing far off course in the Ural mountains.
• 1969 Nov 14 : Struck twice by lightning during launch : Astronauts Pete Conrad, Alan Bean and Dick Gordon experienced two lightning strikes during the launch of the Apollo 12 moon landing mission. The first strike, at 36 seconds after liftoff, knocked the three fuel cells offline and the craft switched to battery power automatically. The second strike at 52 seconds after liftoff, knocked the onboard guidance platform offline. Four temperature sensors on the outside of the Lunar Module were burnt out and four measuring devices in the reaction control system failed temporarily. Fuel cell power was restored about four minutes later. The astronauts spent additional time in earth orbit to make sure the spacecraft was functional before firing their S-IVB third stage engine and departing for the moon.
• 1969, Nov 24 : Struck by camera during splashdown : Astronaut Alan Bean was struck above the right eyebrow by a 16mm movie camera when the Apollo 12 spacecraft splashed down in the ocean. The camera broke free from its stowage place. Bean suffered a concussion, and a 1.25 cm cut above the eyebrow that required stitches.
• 1970, Apr 11 : Premature engine shutdown : During the launch of Apollo 13, its Saturn V second stage suffered a premature shut down on one of its five engines. The center engine shut down two minutes early. The remaining engines on the second and third stages were burned a total of 34 seconds longer. It was later determined that the shut down was caused by pogo vibrations of the rocket. Had the pogo continued, it could have torn the Saturn V apart.
• 1970 April 13: equipment failure: In the most celebrated "near miss," the Apollo 13 crew came home safely after a violent rupture of a liquid oxygen tank deprived the Service Module of its ability to produce electrical power, crippling their spacecraft en route to the moon. They survived the loss of use of their command ship by relying on the Lunar Module as a "life boat" to provide life support and power for the trip home.
• 1971, Aug 7 : One of three main parachutes failed : During descent, the three main parachutes of Apollo 15 opened successfully. However, when the remaining reaction control system fuel was jettisoned, one parachute was damaged by the discarded fuel causing it to collapse. The Apollo 15 and its crew still splashed down safely, at a slightly higher than normal velocity, on the two remaining main parachutes. If a second parachute had failed, the spacecraft would probably have been crushed on impact with the ocean, according to a NASA official.
• 1975 April 5: separation failure: The Soyuz 18a mission nearly ended in disaster when the rocket suffered a second-stage separation failure during launch. This also interrupted the craft's attitude, causing the vehicle to accelerate towards the Earth and triggering an emergency reentry sequence. Due to the downward acceleration, the crew experienced an acceleration of 21.3 g rather than the nominal 15 g for an abort. Upon landing, the vehicle rolled down a hill and stopped just short of a high cliff. The crew survived, but Lazarev, the mission commander, suffered internal injuries due to the severe G-forces and was never able to fly again.
• 1975 July 24: gas poisoning on board: During final descent and parachute deployment for the Apollo Soyuz Test Project Command Module, the U.S. crew were exposed to 300 µL/L of toxic nitrogen tetroxide gas (Reaction Control System oxidizer) venting from the spacecraft and reentering a cabin air intake. A switch was left in the wrong position. 400µL/L is fatal. Vance Brand's heart stopped and he was narrowly resuscitated. The crew members suffered from burning sensations of their eyes, faces, noses, throats and lungs. Thomas Stafford quickly broke out emergency oxygen masks and put one on Brand and gave one to Deke Slayton. The crew were exposed to the toxic gas from 24,000 ft (7.3 km) down to landing. About an hour after landing the crew developed chemical-induced pneumonia and their lungs had edema. They experienced shortness of breath and were hospitalized in Hawaii. The crew spent two weeks in the hospital. By July 30, their chest X-rays appeared to return to normal except for Slayton; he was diagnosed with a benign lesion unrelated to the gas exposure which was later removed.
• 1976 October 16: landing capsule sank in water: The Soyuz 23 capsule broke through the surface of a frozen lake and was dragged underwater by its parachute. The crew was saved after a very difficult rescue operation.
• 1979 April 12 : engine malfunction: Soyuz 33 was the ninth mission to the Salyut 6 orbiting facility, but an engine failure forced the mission to be aborted, and the crew had to return to earth before docking with the station. It was the first-ever failure of a Soyuz engine during orbital operations. The two-man crew, commander Nikolai Rukavishnikov and Bulgarian cosmonaut Georgi Ivanov, suffered a steep ballistic re-entry, but were safely recovered. The original intention of the mission had been to visit the orbiting crew for about a week and leave a fresh vehicle for the station crew to return to earth in. The mission failure meant that the orbiting Salyut 6 crew lacked a reliable return vehicle as their Soyuz had the same suspect engine as Soyuz 33. A subsequent manned flight was canceled and a vacant craft with a redesigned engine was sent for the crew to use.
• 1981 Apr 12 : Columbia STS-1 - Unexpectedly high SRB ignition shock wave overpressure reached design limits of orbiter structure : Solid Rocket Booster ignition shock wave overpressure was four times greater than expected (2.0 psi measured vs 0.5 psi predicted) on STS-1. Some of the Columbia Space Shuttle Orbiter aft structures reached their design limits (2.0 psi) from the overpressure. The overpressure bent four struts that supported two RCS fuel tanks in the nose of Columbia and the locked elevon control flap on the wing was pushed up and down 6 inches by the shock wave. John Young and Robert Crippen in the crew cabin received a 3g jolt from the shock wave. A water spray shock wave damping system had to be installed on the launch pad prior to the STS-2 launch.
• 1983 September 26: fire in launch vehicle: A fuel spillage before the planned liftoff caused Soyuz T-10-1 to be engulfed in flames. The crew was narrowly saved by the activation of their launch escape system, with the rocket exploding two seconds later.
• 1983 Dec 8 : leaked APU hydrazine fuel fire and explosion : In the last two minutes of the Columbia STS-9 mission, during the final approach to the Edwards AFB runway, hydrazine fuel leaked onto two of the three onboard APU's (auxiliary power units) hot surfaces in the aft compartment of the shuttle and caught fire. About 15 minutes after landing, hydrazine fuel trapped in APU control valves exploded, destroying the valves in both APU's. The fire also damaged nearby wiring. The fire stopped when the supply of leaked fuel was exhausted. All of this was discovered the next day when technicians removed a shuttle rear panel and discovered the area blackened and scorched. It is believed that hydrazine leaked in orbit and froze, stopping the leak. After returning, the leak restarted and ignited when combined with oxygen from the atmosphere. There were no injuries during the incident.
• 1985 July 29: STS-51-F: Space Shuttle in-flight engine failure: Five minutes, 45 seconds into ascent, one of three main engines aboard Challenger shut down prematurely due to a spurious high temperature reading. At about the same time, a second main engine almost shut down from a similar problem, but this was observed and inhibited by a fast acting flight controller. The failed SSME resulted in an Abort To Orbit (ATO) trajectory, whereby the shuttle achieves a lower than planned orbital altitude. Had the second engine failed within about 20 seconds of the first, a Transatlantic Landing (TAL) abort might have been necessary. No bailout option existed until after mission STS-51-L, the Challenger disaster. But even with that option, a bailout (a "contingency abort") would never be considered when an "intact abort" option exists, and after five minutes of normal flight it would always exist unless a serious flight control failure or some other major problem beyond engine shutdown occurred.)
• 1988 September 6: sensor failure: At the end of Mir EP-3, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Lyakhov and Afghan cosmonaut Abdul Ahad Mohmand undocked from Mir in the spacecraft Soyuz TM-5. During descent they suffered a computer software problem combined with a sensor problem. The deorbit engine on the TM-5 spacecraft which was to propel them into atmospheric reentry, did not behave as expected. During an attempted burn, the computer shut off the engines prematurely, believing the spacecraft was out of alignment. Lyakhov determined that they were not, in fact, out of alignment, and asserted that the problem was caused by conflicting signals picked up by the alignment sensors caused by solar glare. With the problem apparently solved, two orbits later he restarted to deorbit engines. But the engines shut off again. The flight director decided that they would have to remain in orbit an extra day (a full revolution of the Earth), so they could determine what the problem was. During this time it was realised that during the second attempted engine burn, the computer had tried to execute the program which was used to dock with Mir several months earlier during EP-2. After reprogramming the computer, the next attempt was successful, and the crew safely landed on 7 September.
• 1991 April 8: STS-37: spacesuit puncture: During an extravehicular activity on STS-37, a small rod (palm bar) in a glove of EV2 astronaut Jay Apt's extravehicular mobility unit punctured the suit. Somehow, the astronaut's hand conformed to the puncture and sealed it, preventing any detectable depressurization. During postflight debriefings Apt said after the second EVA, when he removed the gloves, his right hand index finger had an abrasion behind the knuckle. A postflight inspection of the right hand glove found the palm bar of the glove penetrating a restraint and glove bladder into the index finger side of the glove. NASA found air leakage with the bar in place was 3.8 sccm vs a specification of 8.0 sccm. They said if the bar had come out of the hole, the leak still would not have been great enough to activate the secondary oxygen pack. The suit would, however, have shown a high oxygen rate indication.
• 1993 Sep 12 : explosive release device punctures cargo bay bulkhead : Aboard shuttle Discovery, during the STS-51 mission, while releasing the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite from the cargo bay, both the primary and backup explosive release devices detonated. Only the primary device was supposed to have detonated. Large metal bands holding the satellite in place were ripped away causing flying debris. The debris punctured the shuttle cargo bay bulkhead leading to the main engine compartment, damaging wiring trays and payload bay thermal insulation blankets. The puncture in the bulkhead was 3 mm by 13 mm in size. The crew was uninjured and the damage was not great enough to endanger the shuttle. The satellite was undamaged.
• 1995 May 18 : eye injury from Mir exercise equipment : While exercising on the Mir EO-18/NASA 1/Soyuz TM-21 mission, astronaut Norman E. Thagard suffered an eye injury. He was using an exercise device, doing deep knee bends, with elastic straps. One of the straps slipped off of his foot, flew up, and hit him in the eye. Later, even a small amount of light caused pain in his eye. He said using the eye was, "like looking at the world through gauze." An ophthalmologist at Mission Control-Moscow prescribed steroid drops and the eye healed.
• 1997 February 23: fire on board: There was a fire on board the Mir space station when a lithium perchlorate canister used to generate oxygen leaked. The fire was extinguished after about 90 seconds, but smoke did not clear for several minutes.
• 1997 June 25: collision in space: At Mir during a re-docking test with the Progress M-34 cargo freighter, the Progress freighter collided with the Spektr module and solar arrays of the Mir space station. This damaged the solar arrays and the collision punctured a hole in the Spektr module and the space station began depressurizing. The onboard crew of two Russians and one visiting NASA astronaut were able to close off the Spektr module from the rest of Mir after quickly cutting cables and hoses blocking hatch closure.
• 1999 July 23: STS-93: main engine electrical short and hydrogen leak: Five seconds after liftoff, an electrical short knocked out controllers for two shuttle main engines. The engines automatically switched to their backup controllers. Had a further short shut down two engines, Columbia would have ditched in the ocean, although the crew could have possibly bailed out. Concurrently a pin came loose inside one engine and ruptured a cooling line, allowing a hydrogen fuel leak. This caused premature fuel exhaustion, but the vehicle safely achieved a slightly lower orbit. Had the failure propagated further, a risky transatlantic or RTLS abort would have been required.
• 2001 Feb 10 : STS-98 / ISS - toxic ammonia leak during EVA : During EVA 1 on the Atlantis STS-98 mission, NASA astronauts Robert L. Curbeam and Thomas D. Jones were connecting cooling lines on the International Space Station while working to install the Destiny Laboratory Module. A defective quick-disconnect valve allowed 5% of the ammonia cooling supply to escape into space. The escaping ammonia froze on the spacesuit of astronaut Curbeam as he struggled to close the valve. His helmet and suit were coated in toxic ammonia crystals an inch thick. Mission Control instructed Curbeam to remain outside for an entire orbit to allow the Sun to evaporate the frozen ammonia from his spacesuit. When they returned to the airlock, the astronauts pressurized, vented and then repressurized the air lock to purge any remaining toxic ammonia. After they removed their spacesuits, the crew wore oxygen masks for another 20 minutes to allow life-support systems in the airlock to further filter the air. No injuries resulted from the incident.
• 2003 May 3: ballistic reentry, injured shoulder: The Soyuz TMA-1 capsule had a malfunction during its return to Earth from the ISS Expedition 6 mission and performed a ballistic reentry. The crew was subjected to about 8 to 9 G's during reentry. The capsule landed 500 km from the intended landing target. In addition, after landing the capsule was dragged about 15 meters by its parachute and ended up on its side in a hard landing. Astronaut Don Pettit injured his shoulder and was placed on a stretcher in a rescue helicopter and did not take part in post-landing ceremonies.
• 2004 Sep 29 : 29 unplanned rolls during ascent : While piloting SpaceShipOne on suborbital flight 16P, the first of two flights that won the X-Prize for exceeding 100 km in altitude, astronaut Mike Melvill experienced 29 unplanned rolls during and after powered ascent. The rolls began at 50 seconds into the engine burn. The burn was stopped 11 seconds early after burning a total of 76 seconds. After engine cutoff, the craft continued rolling while coasting to apogee. The roll was finally brought under control after apogee using the crafts reaction jets. SpaceShipOne landed safely and Mike Melvill was uninjured.
• 2008 April 19: Soyuz TMA-11 suffered a reentry mishap similar to that suffered by Soyuz 5 in 1969. The service module failed to completely separate from the reentry vehicle and caused it to face the wrong way during the early portion of aerobraking. As with Soyuz 5, the service module eventually separated and the reentry vehicle completed a rough but survivable landing. Following the Russian news agency Interfax's report, this was widely reported as life-threatening while NASA urged caution pending an investigation of the vehicle. South Korean astronaut Yi So-Yeon was hospitalized after her return to South Korea due to injuries caused by the rough return voyage in the Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft. The South Korean Science Ministry said that the astronaut had a minor injury to her neck muscles and had bruised her spinal column.