History
Pressure suits were worn on the Vostok space missions, but when the Soyuz spacecraft was being developed in the mid-1960s, the controversial decision was taken by its designers, OKB-1, not to use them on the new spacecraft. Some of the early Soyuz flights carried Yastreb space suits but these were only for space walks and were only worn in orbit.
On June 30, 1971, the crew of Soyuz 11 died when their spacecraft depressurised during re-entry. One of the recommendations of the investigating government commission was that pressure suits should be worn by future crews during critical phases of their mission - launch, docking and landing.
NPP Zvezda was given the task of providing the suits. They rejected the use of existing Soviet space suits and chose to base a new suit on the existing Sokol aviation pressure suit. The main modification was the replacement of the Sokol suit's hard helmet. Other features of the aviation suit that were considered unnecessary were removed to save weight.
At the same time, a life support system was developed in co-operation with OKB-1. The new suit was named the Sokol-K, K (Kosmos) is the abbreviation of the Russian word for space.
Read more about this topic: Sokol Space Suit
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