Cosmonauts ‘escape death’

Press, 3 October 1983, Page 10

Cosmonauts ‘escape death’

NZPA Washington Three Soviet cosmonauts had escaped death, but may have been injured, when a Soviet rocket exploded or caught fire at a remote launch site in Asia, United States intelligence sources reported yesterday. The cosmonauts had been saved when their spaceship was pulled away from the booster by an escape rocket mounted atop the capsule and they parachuted to the ground, the sources said. The incident, the first of its kind in either American or Soviet-manned space programmes, had occurred as the liquid-fuel rocket was about to blast off and carry the crew to the orbiting Salyut 7 space station, the sources said.

The cosmonauts, one of whom may have been a woman, were to have joined two other Soviet spacemen who have been aboard the Salyut for 96 days. The cosmonauts now on board Salyut 7 were scheduled to return home this week or next. It was not known how much longer they would now be forced to remain in orbit. The sources said that the

cosmonauts may have been hurt in the accident one said. “The escape rocket really pulled the capsule away with a slam bang. The cosmonauts are subject to 15Gs for. two to three seconds. That’s like driving a car into a tree.” That means 15 times the force of gravity. The sources declined to say where they had got their information, but the United States has an intelligence network that includes satellites and radar listening posts capable of detecting such an event. The “Washington Post” reported yesterday that the rocket had exploded, but the sources said that the accident may have been fire instead of an explosion. Quoting unidentified intelligence sources, the “Post” said that the booster rocket had suffered a “catastrophic failure” when 270 tonnes of kerosene and liquid oxygen that lift the Soyuz spacecraft away from Earth had ignited and exploded almost instantly as it prepared to lift off. In Moscow the Soviet Union yesterday remained silent on the American report, Reuter said.