Lost Cosmonauts

The Lost Cosmonauts, or Phantom Cosmonauts, are cosmonauts who allegedly entered outer space, but whose existence has never been acknowledged by either the Soviet or Russian space authorities.

Proponents of the Lost Cosmonauts theory concede that Yuri Gagarin was the first man to survive space travel, but claim that the Soviet Union attempted to launch two or more manned space flights prior to Gagarin's, and that at least two cosmonauts died in the attempts. Another cosmonaut, Vladimir Ilyushin, is believed to have landed off-course and was held by the Chinese government. The Soviet government supposedly suppressed this information, to prevent bad publicity during the height of the Cold War.

The evidence cited to support Lost Cosmonaut theories is generally not regarded as conclusive, and several cases have been confirmed as hoaxes. In the 1980s, American journalist James Oberg researched space-related disasters in the Soviet Union, but found no evidence of these Lost Cosmonauts. Since the early 1990s collapse of the Soviet Union, much previously restricted information is now available. Even with access to published Soviet archival material and memoirs of Russian space pioneers, no hard evidence has emerged to support the Lost Cosmonaut stories.

Supposed incidents in space

An article published in the English language edition of Pravda in April 2001, forty years after Gagarin's successful orbit, gave some details about the three cosmonauts reputed to have been lost in earlier missions.

Aleksei Ledovsky (late 1957)

In December 1959, a "high-ranking Czech Communist" leaked information about many purported 'unofficial' space 'shots'. Aleksei Ledovsky was mentioned as being launched inside a converted R-5A rocket.

Sergey Shiborin (February 1958)

Pioneering space theoretician Hermann Oberth claimed in 1959 that a pilot had been killed on a sub-orbital ballistic flight from Kapustin Yar in early 1958. He never provided a source for the story. In December 1959, the Italian news agency Continentale reported that a series of cosmonaut deaths on suborbital flights had been revealed by a high-ranking Czech communist. Among these were Sergey Shiborin, said to have perished in 1958. No other evidence of Soviet sub-orbital manned flights ever came to light.

Andrei Mitkov (January 1959)

In December 1959, a "High-ranking Czech communist" leaked much information about many of these 'unofficial' launches, and Andrei Mitkov was, like Ledovsky, mentioned as being launched inside of an R-5A conversion.

Marya Gromova (1959)

In December 1959, again a "High-ranking Czech communist" leaked information about many of these 'unofficial' launches, including that of Marya Gromova, a woman who purportedly flew "some sort of 'space aeroplane' into oblivion", never to be seen or heard from again. If the story of Gromova is true, her craft most likely disintegrated upon re-entry from a sub-orbital flight. The 'Space Aeroplane' would likely be a Cosmonaut training vehicle, intended for high-altitude operation.

Unknown man (May 15, 1960)

Robert A. Heinlein wrote in his 1960 article "'Pravda' means 'Truth'" (reprinted in Expanded Universe) that on 15 May, 1960, while traveling in the Soviet Union, in Vilnius (called by its Polish name "Wilno" throughout the article; Vilnius is far away from Soviet rocket launch sites), he was told by Red Army cadets that the Soviet Union had launched a man into orbit that day, but that later the same day it was denied by officials and that no issues of the Pravda national newspaper could be found in Vilnius or, reportedly, other Soviet cities.

Heinlein wrote that there was an orbital launch, later said to be unmanned, on that day, but that the retro-rockets had fired while the vehicle was at the wrong altitude, making recovery efforts unsuccessful.

According to Gagarin's biography these rumours were likely started as a result of two Vostok missions, equipped with dummies and human voice tape recordings, to check if the radio worked, that were made just prior to Gagarin's flight.

According to the NASA NSSDC Master Catalog, on 15 May, 1960, Sputnik 4 with "a self-sustaining biological cabin with a dummy of a man" was launched.

Ivan Kachur (September 27, 1960)

A 1959 edition of Ogonyok carried images of three men, Piotr Dolgov, Ivan Kachur and Alexey Grachov, testing high-altitude equipment. Kachur is known to have disappeared around this time; his name has become linked to this equipment.

Piotr Dolgov (October 11, 1960)

Piotr Dolgov was a colonel in the Soviet Air Force.

Over the years there have been false reports that Dolgov was actually killed on October 11, 1960, in a failed flight of a Vostok spacecraft. Such a flight would have occurred six months prior to the historic Vostok 1 flight of Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961. These reports would make Dolgov a phantom cosmonaut, one of a few whose identity is documented, although he was not a member of the cosmonaut team.

Officially he was killed on November 1, 1962, while carrying out a high-altitude parachute jump from a Volga balloon gondola. Dolgov jumped at an altitude of 28,640 meters (93,970 feet). The helmet visor of Dolgov's Sokol space suit hit part of the gondola as he exited, de-pressurizing the suit and killing him.

Gennady Zavadovsky (1960)

In late 1959, Ogonyok carried pictures of a certain 'Comrade Gennady Zavadovsky' testing high-altitude equipment (perhaps with Grachov and others). Zavadovsky would later appear on lists of 'dead cosmonauts', without a date of death or accident description .

However, in a US press conference on 23 February 1962, Col. Barney Oldfield revealed that a space cabin had been orbiting the earth since about 1960, as it had become jammed into its booster rocket. Korabl Sputnik 1 started one year before Gagarin, as it was known, was a prototype of the later Zenit and Vostok manned launchers. The onboard TDU had ordered the retro rockets to fire, but had instead malfunctioned and done the inverse - putting the craft into a higher orbit. The re-entry capsule was apparently without even a heatshield. The Soviet Union claimed the capsule had been unmanned.

Ludmila and Nikolay/Anatoly Tokov (1961)

Supposedly a married couple - Ludmila Tokov and "Nikolay" or "Anatoly" Tokov

TASS later reported that an unmanned satellite roughly the size of a London bus had been launched, but had disintegrated during re-entry.

The Torre Bert Recordings

Regardless of the existence of either Nikolay/Anatoly Tokov, the Torre Bert listening station in northern Italy purported to have picked up a transmission of a woman's voice, sounding confused and frightened as her craft began to break up upon reentry. Presumably the voice was Ludmila's, though no one knows how or why this name has become attached to the voice on the tape. The interpretation of the tape can be found at the website.

Gennady Mikhailov (February 2, 1961)

Alleged first human in orbit, Gennady Mikhailov may have died in orbit due to heart failure. This rumor may have been derived from reports in the French and Italian press, claiming that Sputnik 7 (launched 4 February, not 2) was a manned mission. According to the TASS news agency it was a failed Venus probe. This is believed to be the source of the Torre Bert recording of both heartbeats and breathing. Both files can be found at the Lost Cosmonauts Web site.

Unknown couple (February 24, 1961)

There were reports of a couple launched on February 17 aboard a 'Lunik' spacecraft orbiting the earth, reporting "Everything is satisfactory, we are orbiting the earth" at regular intervals.

On February 24, there were some garbled verbal transmissions about something the couple could see outside their ship, and had to urgently communicate to Earth. What happened is unclear, but communication was lost. Around the same time the listening station at Torre Bert apparently picked up an SOS signal from a craft in space. As the signal got weaker, it was assumed whatever craft it was disappeared into deep space.

Valentin Bondarenko (March 23, 1961)

Valentin Bondarenko, a member of the original cosmonaut program, died in a training accident on the ground when a high-oxygen pressurised chamber he was in caught fire on 23 March, 1961. He was erased from official Soviet pictures and descriptive materials of the cosmonaut program, leading to all manner of speculation about him and other cosmonauts whose histories were less than perfectly known. The true nature of his accident was not revealed until the 1980s.

Vladimir Ilyushin (April 7, 1961)

Vladimir Ilyushin, son of Soviet airplane designer Sergey Ilyushin, was a Soviet pilot and is purported to have been a cosmonaut, alleged by some to have actually been the first man in space on 7 April, 1961--an honor generally attributed to Yuri Gagarin on 12 April.

The theories surrounding this alleged orbital flight are that a failure aboard the spacecraft caused controllers to bring the descending capsule down several orbits earlier than intended, resulting in its landing in the People's Republic of China. The pilot was then held by Chinese authorities for a year before being returned to the Soviet Union. The international embarrassment that would have resulted from such an incident is cited as the Soviets' reason for not publicizing this flight, instead focusing their publicizing efforts on the subsequent successful flight of Yuri Gagarin.

However, there are reasons to disbelieve this allegation. Although both were Communist governments, relations between the Soviet Union and China were strained. The propaganda value of a Soviet pilot captured flying over Chinese territory would have given little reason for Chinese authorities to cooperate in a cover-up. Also, "bringing the capsule down several orbits earlier than intended" does not make sense, considering that the mission involved a single orbit.

This theory originated on 10 April, 1961, with Dennis Ogden, the Moscow correspondent of the British Communist newspaper Daily Worker, and was actually based on Ilyushin's medical treatment and care in China. According to many Soviet sources including the article in Komsomolskaya Pravda dated 11 July, 2005, although Ilyushin was a famous test pilot, he was never involved in the space program. On 5 June, 1960, his legs were seriously injured in a car accident, and Ilyushin underwent medical treatment for a year in Moscow, then was sent Hangzhou, China, for rehabilitation under specialists in oriental medicine. This explanation was also confirmed by the Soviet defector Leonid Vladimirov, an engineer who had personal contacts with Ilyushin in 1960, in his 1973 book "The Russian Space Bluff", published in Frankfurt (Russian translation of the book).

The theory was lent some credibility in 1999 in a documentary on the subject titled called Cosmonaut Cover-Up. Interviewed in English, Sergei Khrushchev, son of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, said that it was true and that Vladimir Ilyushin was actually held in China for over a year as a "guest" of the People's Republic of China. He was later returned to the Soviet Union, but by then the Gagarin legend was in place and the bizarre incident was covered up. The main reason for concealment was to not let the West see the schism between China and the USSR.

Vladimir Ilyushin, who currently lives in Russia, has never confirmed this theory.

Alexey Belokonev (November 1962)

Alexey Belokonev is reportedly one of three (two men and a woman) cosmonauts aboard a November flight. The Torre Bert tower in Italy allegedly picked up a frantic set of messages relayed by the three occupants. 'Conditions growing worse why don't you answer? ... we are going slower... the world will never know about us . . '

Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seryogin (March 2-7, 1968)

Some sources claims that first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin with second test-pilot Vladimir Seryogin not died in crash of Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 fighter during a training flight on 27 March 1968. In this time Soviet Union and United States participated in Moon race and under its manned moon-flyby first phase Soviets tested a intended to be a manned the L1/Zond spacecraft for flights around Moon. According to rumours, allegedly Soviet Union launched on 2 March 1968 a first manned this spacecraft Zond 4 with Gagarin and Seryogin, but after successfull start and flight around Moon Zond 4 crushed at 7 March on a recovery to Earth. Official announce says that it is a unmanned automatic test flight ended by intentional self-destruction due to unappropriable recovery trajectory not to territory of USSR (to Atlantic Ocean).

Yury Gagarin in 1963-1967 was really a head of "moon" team of cosmonauts for two (flyby and landing) Soviet manned moon programs (first open announcement about this was made by Tereshkova during her visit on Cuba). After desecreting of Soviet manned moon programs in 1989, officially reported that he really presented in a Baykonur cosmodrome at 27 March 1968 but with Valery Bykovsky, and not for flight onboard of Zond 4 but for observe start of one. Also officially stated that crew for first manned L1/Zond spacecraft included Alexey Leonov and Valery Bykovsky, Vladimir Seryogin no was in any cosmonaut's team, and to this time L1/Zond spacecraft was not ready for manned missions after 5 uncussessfull or partially-uncussessfull unmanned test starts (as Cosmos 146 on 10 March 1967, as Cosmos 154 on 8 April 1967, as undesignated Zond 1967A 27 September 1967 and as undesignated Zond 1967B on 22 November 1967) although mission of 2-7 March really was a first flight of L1/Zond spacecraft under open designation "Zond". Next (failed) attempt of launch of L1/Zond spacecraft occured very soonly, on 23 April 1968, so unlikely that this one may be undertaked after such short duration after allegedly the serious failed manned mission. Laterly L1/Zond spacecraft made only unmanned few automatic flights, including one seemed to US as suspicious manned - see below.

Unknown crew of two (July 3, 1969)

Soviet Union lose to United States the manned moon-landing second phase of Moon race, but some sources claims that just before the historic flight to the Moon of Apollo 11The Soviets undertook an avanturistic attempt to beat the Americans and win this competition. Despite of the unsuccessfull first test start of the new Soviet huge N1 rocket in 20th January 1969, allegedly a decision was accepted to try to send to the Moon a manned craft L3 in the second flight of an N1. This test occured at 3rd July 1969, but was ended by a giant explosion in that start pad was destroyed and suspicted cosmonauts died. Official sources tells that to this time (and laterly) the L3 craft was not fully ready for manned missions - its moon-landing module LK was tested a few times but its orbital 7K-LOK never was successfully tested before a closing in 1974 of Soviet manned moon-landing program that was officially denied and under top secret until 1989.

This claims correlates with the late hoax about unsuccessful moon-shot flight of Andrei Mikoyan - see below.

Unknown pilots of Luna zonds and Lunokhod moon-rovers (1969-1973)

Some rumours claims that manned-"compensatory" Soviet automatic sample-return stations Luna (failed to start in 14 June 1969 undesignated, started 13 July 1969 but failed to moon-landing Luna 15, etc) and remote-controlled automatic moon rovers Lunokhods (one failed to start in 19 February 1969 and two successfully operated launched in 10 November 1970 and 8 January 1973) due to incomlete automatization were crewed by a cosmonauts agreed to suicide in the name of Motherland. But it is known that sizes of Luna and Lunokhod not allowed to place even though a one cosmonaut (let dwarf) and many-days life-support systems there. Although one of unrealised goals was a use an modified Lunokhods with additional man-controlling equipment as transport in manned moon-landing missions.

Confirmed hoaxes

A number of claims have been confirmed as hoaxes:

Ivan Istochnikov

Officially Soyuz 2 was an 'unmanned spacecraft' that was the docking target for Soyuz 3. However, Mike Arena, an American journalist, found in 1993 that Ivan Istochnikov and his dog Kloka were manning Soyuz 2, and disappeared on 26 October, 1968, with signs of having been hit by a meteorite. They had been "erased" from history by the Soviet authorities, who could not tolerate such a failure.

The entire story was a hoax perpetrated by Joan Fontcuberta, a 'modern art exercise' that included falsified mission 'artifacts', various digitally manipulated images, and immensely detailed feature-length biographies which turned out to be riddled with hundreds of historical as well as technical errors. The exhibit was shown in Madrid in 1997 and the National Museum of Catalan Art in 1998. Brown University later purchased several articles, and put them on display themselves.

Mexico's Luna Cornea magazine however, failed to notice this, and ran issue number 14 (January/April 1998) with photos, and a story explaining the tragic and as-yet-untold truth.

The name Ivan Istochnikov is a Russian translation of Joan Fontcuberta's name; translated to English from Russian reads "John of the Source".

On 11 June, 2006, Cuarto Milenio, a mysteries program led by Iker Jiménez on the Spanish TV channel Cuatro, presented the story as possibly true.

Japanese singer Akino Arai wrote a song about Istochnikov and Kloka, titled "Sputnik" on her Furu Platinum album.

Pavel Popovich and Vitali Sevastyanov

NASA radio-monitoring service intercepted a talks of Pavel Popovich and Vitali Sevastyanov on a communication lines between control center and Soviet Zond 6 spacecraft that was started in 10 November 1968 and fulfilled the 7-days flight around Moon. In this time it is a intense moment of manned moon-flyby first phase of Moon race between Soviet Union and United States, and Soviet L1/Zond spacecraft was almost ready for manned missions. Althogh it not enough tested in automatic mode (7 times and all uncussessfull or partially-uncussessfull), Soviet Union really may undertake a manned moon-flyby flight of L1/Zond spacecraft to beat Americans. Soonly, it was clear for Americans (and laterly confirmed after desecreting of Soviet manned moon programs in 1989), that it was test transmissions between cosmonauts from on ground control center and another main one with Zond 6 as re-translator only. After successfull US Apollo 8 manned flight around Moon Soviet manned moon-flyby missions lost a political reason, first manned flight of L1/Zond spacecraft with Alexey Leonov and Valery Bykovsky planned to end of 1968 beginning of 1969 was cancelled, and laterly Zond spacecraft made a few unmanned automatic flights after that a Soviet moon-flyby program was closed in 1970 without achivement of manned primary goal.

Andrei Mikoyan

Andrei Mikoyan was reportedly killed together with a second crew member in an attempt to reach the moon ahead of the Americans in early 1969. Due to system malfunction they failed to get into lunar orbit and shot past the moon.

The source of this story was undoubtedly the television series 'The Cape'. The episode 'Buried in Peace' first aired on 28 October 1996. In it a shuttle crew on a mission to repair a communications satellite encounters a derelict Soviet spacecraft with a dead crew - the result of a secret attempt to send a manned mission to the moon 30 years earlier, before the United States. Tom Nowicki played Major Andrei Mikoyan in the story.

This story correlates with another claims about manned unsuccessfull second test flight of N1 rocket - see above.

Igor Fedrov

A 1998 American urban legend held that during the fall of the Soviet Union, one of their cosmonauts was stranded on the Mir space station. The Soyuz ferry spacecraft had a nominal on-orbit storage life of 180 days. Financial and technical problems, related to the political uncertainty, delayed the launch of replacement crews.

Several times the Soyuz craft remained docked to the station, in orbit, longer than its six-month-rated life. Every time this happened 'experts' would state on television news reports that the crew was 'stranded'. This first happened on the Soyuz TM-15 flight of 1992.

This legend became the basis for the Norwegian short film 'Kosmonaut', directed by Stefan Faldbakken. On a long duration mission aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, fictional cosmonaut Igor Fedrov is unable to contact ground control during the chaotic period after Gorbachev's overthrow in 1991. Stranded in his Soyuz capsule, unable to receive instructions or update his guidance system, his life support supplies dwindling, he finally attempts a manually guided reentry and dies in the attempt.

Cultural references

The lost cosmonauts are referred to in pop culture including art, science fiction and video games.

• A 2005 Russian mockumentary movie First on the Moon (Первые на Луне) features the fictional story of a 1938 Soviet landing on the Moon.
• The Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater characters of The Boss and The Fury were fictional but noteworthy lost astronaut/cosmonauts.
• There are also references to stranded Russian astronauts in UK comics. A 1989 installment of Philip Bond's "Wired World", published in the UK comics anthology Deadline magazine, features a cosmonaut who crash lands in a London park where the main characters are picnicking. He goes drinking with them then phones his mother, and is later grabbed by men in black, presumably KGB officers. There is also a character called Yuri in Grant Morrison's 2000 AD series "Really And Truly" circa 1992, who wears a space suit all the time and has the strength of seventeen men.
• Daniel Kalder's account of anti-tourism in the unknown ex-Soviet satellite states is titled Lost Cosmonaut.
• In Michael Cassutt's book Red Moon, one of the secondary characters is a cosmonaut named Shiborin, likely as a tribute to the lost cosmonaut. This Shiborin, however, served at the height of the Space Race, about a decade after the lost cosmonaut's supposed death, made two successful space flights, and eventually headed the cosmonaut facility as a lieutenant general.

See also

• Space accidents and incidents
• Apollo moon landing hoax accusations
• Soviet Moonshot
• Kwangmyŏngsŏng
• Soyuz 1
• Laika
• Judica Cordiglia brothers
• List of fictional astronauts

References

• Encyclopedia Astronautica: Phantom cosmonauts
• James Oberg (1988). Uncovering Soviet Disasters: Exploring the Limits of Glasnost, Random House, ISBN 0-394-56095-7
• Pavel Toufar, 2002/2003, Kruty vesmir, Akcent, ISBN 80-7268-245-8, 58-258
• Pavel Toufar, 2001, Vzestup a pad Jurije Gagarina, Regia, ISBN 80-86367-11-8
• Alexander Zheleznyakov, Gagarin was still the first (same in Russian)
• "Komsomolskaya pravda" newspaper (in Russian)
• A.Pervushin "Terrible secret" of soviet space (in Russian)
• Uchitelskaya gazeta (in Russian)
• Ren-TV story (in Russian)

External links

• Lost Cosmonauts
• Encyclopedia Astronautica: Phantom cosmonauts
• Straight Dope on "lost" cosmonauts
• Oberg chapter on Dead Cosmonauts