Early Soyuz MissionsWestern observers believe that the first
manned Soyuz mission (Apr. 23, 1967) was to have involved a
spectacular linkup between two spacecraft
launched separately, followed by a
space walk of two cosmonauts from one craft to the other. Instead, Soyuz 1 was called back to Earth because of some malfunction, and its pilot, Vladimir Komarov, was killed during reentry after the shroud lines of the craft's main parachute became twisted. Komarov thus became the first person to die in the course of an actual spaceflight.After two years of unmanned and manned test flights the planned two-craft docking and space-walk mission was at last successfully carried out in January 1969. At that time cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov manually performed the first linkup of two manned vehicles in space by docking his Soyuz 4 with Soyuz 5, which carried Aleksei Yeliseyev, Yevgeny Khrunov, and Boris Volynov. Yeliseyev and Khrunov walked in space and entered Soyuz 4 for their return to Earth, while Volynov brought back Soyuz 5 alone.In response to the U.S. Apollo 11 Moon-landing success in that same year Soviet space engineers launched spaceships Soyuz 6, Soyuz 7, and Soyuz 8 on Oct. 11, 12, and 13, respectively, carrying out with only partial success a series of maneuvering experiments. Along with these Earth-orbital missions, modified unmanned Soyuz capsules under the Zond program were launched around the Moon in September and November 1968, and plans evidently were made to send a cosmonaut around the Moon early in 1969. These plans were canceled, however, after the unexpectedly rapid progress of the Apollo program overtook the Soviet space schedule.