46 years ago today (April 24, 1967) cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed on landing after returning from a 1 day trip in Earth orbit. He was the first person killed during a space mission. His flight, Soyuz-1, was marred by trouble from the moment he entered orbit. Unfortunately, a lot of speculation, rumor, and outright crazy theories still characterize popular notions about this terribly tragic mission. Komarov’s death is like the JFK assassination in U.S. culture; everybody has a theory about why it happened and no one believes the official version. Actually the ‘official’ version is probably the most plausible and likely account. Basically, there were serious problems in the packing of his parachutes (both the primary and the backup chutes) and they both failed to perform properly upon deployment when the capsule was falling through the atmosphere after reentry. Without a working parachute, the capsule smashed into the Earth about 65 kilometers east of the town of Orsk, a town near the southern tip of the Ural Mountain range in southern Russia. The capsule basically flattened like a pancake and exploded upon impact (due to 30 kilograms of hydrogen peroxide which was to have been used for the actual landing but was never used). Komarov may have already been unconscious by the time of impact although we will never know exactly. There was a tape recorder on board to record the cosmonaut during reentry but the tape recorder was found completely melted. Komarov’s body was basically burned to a pulp.

Sally Ride (1951-2012), the first American woman in space.

She flew in space twice, first in 1983 (on mission STS-7) and the second time in 1984 (on mission STS-41-G). The top picture was taken on her second flight into space. Ride is on the right, while on the left is Kathryn Sullivan, a fellow astronaut. Both Sullivan and Ride were selected by NASA in 1978 as part of a new group of 35 astronauts to fly the Space Shuttle. There were five women in that group (bottom image), all of whom eventually flew in space. They were, from left to right: Shannon Lucid, Rhea Seddon, Kathryn Sullivan, Judith Resnik, Anna Fisher, and Sally Ride. They all had pretty interesting careers.

Shannon Lucid, 69, flew 5 times in space, including over six months on board the Russian space station Mir. She retired from NASA earlier this year, in January.

Rhea Seddon, 64, flew 3 times in space, and was one of the first practising physicians to go into space. After retiring from NASA, she returned to Tennessee where she was the Chief Medical Officer of the Vanderbilt Medical Group in Nashville. She continues to promote innovative healthcare programs.

Kathryn Sullivan, 60, flew 3 times in space and became the first American woman to walk in space in 1984. She is now President Obama’s Assistant Secretary of Commerce.

Judith Resnik was killed in 1986 during the Challenger disaster on mission STS-51-L. She was 36 years old. That mission was to be her second space mission. She was the first American Jewish astronaut in space.

Anna Fisher, 62, flew once in space in 1984, becoming the first mother in space. She still works for NASA but in a management position.

Sally Ride, died on July 23, 2012 at the age of 61. Besides her space missions, she served on both the Challenger and Columbia accident investigation commissions. Later, she founded Sally Ride Science, a foundation to encourage girls to go into science. And last, but not least, she’s probably the first gay woman in space.

Konstantin Tsiolkovskiy (1857-1935) was a bit of a curmudgeon and crackpot but he was prescient. Besides coming up with the mathematics that made it possible to develop viable rocket propulsion (in 1903!), he also wrote a bunch of stuff on pretty much every aspect of space travel. In June 1933, he produced an “Album of Space Voyages”—basically a bunch of hand-drawn sketches predicting what might happen during spaceflights. This page from the album shows how things might seem in weightlessness, presumably inside a space station. Pretty good for a half-deaf village school teacher.

The “CCCP” on Yuri Gagarin’s helmet was painted on less than half an hour before his launch on April 12, 1961. Original color images without the “CCCP” were published only very recently.