What happened in a disaster on a manned space mission?

Answer 1

There are a number of disasters that have happened on board spacecraft. Some of the best known ones are these:

The Apollo 1 cockpit fire during a pre-flight launchpad testing session. This killed three astronauts.

The Apollo 13 oxygen tank explosion en-route to the moon, which crippled the spacecraft and while the landing was aborted, all three astronauts returned safely to earth.

The more recent Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters have claimed the lives of seven astronauts each. On Challenger, a faulty seal on a solid rocket booster resulted in the puncture and explosion of the main fuel tank. On Columbia, a small hole in the underside of the wing protective tiles was made from foam falling from the fuel tank during launch. The extent of the problem was not realized, until after the shuttle was pulled apart during re-entry because of the effects of heat damaging the wing structure.

The link below details these and many more. The first page includes fatal disasters, the second page is about non-fatal disasters.

Answer 2

The Apollo 13 spacecraft suffered an explosion in the oxygen tank in the Service Module due to an electrical fault which resulted in a shortage of electrical power and oxygen. The Lunar Module was used as a lifeboat in order to conserve power for the re-entry procedures. Conditions were appalling in the cold, dark and cramped lunar module.

Meanwhile on Earth, teams of hundreds of scientists created new strategies and procedures, ranging from instructions for a device that would prevent the men from suffocating on their own CO2 exhalations to the burns and procedures needed to send them around the moon and back to Earth using the moon's own gravity.

No one knew the extent of the damage done until the Service Module was jettisoned just prior to re-entry. Even then, it was not known if the heat shield that would protect them from burning up was damaged, but all went normally and they splashed down uneventfully.

The Apollo 13 Command Module is now in the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kansas. The breakup of the space shuttle Challenger was the first space shuttle disaster. It was caused by the failure of two O- rings in one of the solid rocket boosters (SRB's) to properly seal. There had been problems with the seal on other missions, but it is thought that the decision to launch in near-freezing temperatures contributed to the failure, making the seal rigid and unable to seal properly. This led to a catastrophic chain of events. Hot gases escaped from the SRB, followed by a flame, damaging the clamp securing the SRB, and burning through the external fuel tank causing the tank to disintegrate. The forces created caused the orbiter to disintegrate (it did not explode) before the debris crashed into the ocean.

During the launch of Columbia, foam from the external fuel tank had hit the orbiter's underside. Unknown to anyone at the time, it had punctured a hole in one of the insulating tiles on the wing. Although it was known that foam had hit Colombia, it was deemed to not have been sufficient to cause serious damage.

As the orbiter with its crew of seven were re-entering the atmosphere, the heat generated by the re-entry caused warping of the orbiter's wing frame which affected the stability of the shuttle. Eventually all control was lost and forces pulled the orbiter apart above Texas. Commander Rick Husband bravely fought to control the shuttle manually in the seconds before all were killed.

Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died when a capsule chute failed during re-entry.

Three Russian cosmonauts were killed when their Soyuz craft suffered de-pressurization during re-entry. They were not equipped with pressure suits.

Answer 3

One of the most well-known disasters on a manned space mission was the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986. The shuttle disintegrated 73 seconds after liftoff, resulting in the deaths of all seven crew members on board. The disaster was later attributed to the failure of an O-ring seal in one of the solid rocket boosters, which allowed hot gas to leak and cause the explosion.