On January 16, 1969, two crewed spacecraft docked in orbit for the first time.
When the Soviet Union launched the Soyuz 4 spacecraft, only one cosmonaut was on board. But it returned with a crew of three after two cosmonauts from Soyuz 5 transferred spacecrafts in orbit. Soyuz 4 safely returned to Earth, but the one unlucky cosmonaut who was left behind in Soyuz 5 had a pretty rough landing. During reentry, the service module failed to separate from the descent module, and the spacecraft got turned upside-down. To top it off, the parachutes and soft-landing rockets failed. That cosmonaut, Boris Volynov, miraculously survived the crash — but he did lose a few teeth.
When the Soviet Union launched the Soyuz 4 spacecraft, only one cosmonaut was on board. But it returned with a crew of three after two cosmonauts from Soyuz 5 transferred spacecrafts in orbit. Soyuz 4 safely returned to Earth, but the one unlucky cosmonaut who was left behind in Soyuz 5 had a pretty rough landing. During reentry, the service module failed to separate from the descent module, and the spacecraft got turned upside-down. To top it off, the parachutes and soft-landing rockets failed. That cosmonaut, Boris Volynov, miraculously survived the crash — but he did lose a few teeth.
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TechTranscript
00:00On this day in space.
00:03On January 16, 1969, two crewed spacecraft docked in orbit for the first time.
00:09When the Soviet Union launched the Soyuz 4 spacecraft, only one cosmonaut was on board.
00:14But it returned with a crew of three after two cosmonauts from Soyuz 5 transferred spacecrafts in orbit.
00:20Soyuz 4 safely returned to Earth, but the one unlucky cosmonaut who was left behind in Soyuz 5 had a pretty rough landing.
00:27During reentry, the service module failed to separate from the descent module, and the spacecraft got turned upside down.
00:33To top it off, the parachutes and soft landing rockets failed.
00:37That cosmonaut, Boris Volyanov, miraculously survived the crash, but he did lose a few teeth.
00:44And that's what happened on this day in space.
00:47NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology