The Lost Cosmonauts or Phantom Cosmonauts are subjects of a
conspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
* ...
, which alleges
that
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
and
Russia
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
n space authorities have concealed the deaths of some
cosmonaut
An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...
s in
outer space. Proponents of the Lost Cosmonauts theory argue that the Soviet Union attempted to launch
human spaceflight
Human spaceflight (also referred to as manned spaceflight or crewed spaceflight) is spaceflight with a crew or passengers aboard a spacecraft, often with the spacecraft being operated directly by the onboard human crew. Spacecraft can also be ...
s before
Yuri Gagarin's first spaceflight, and that cosmonauts onboard died in those attempts. Soviet military pilot
Vladimir Ilyushin was alleged to have landed off course and been held by the
Chinese government
The government of the People's Republic of China is based on a system of people's congress within the parameters of a Unitary state, unitary communist state, in which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enacts its policies through people's ...
. The
Government of the Soviet Union
The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was the executive and administrative organ of the highest organ of state power, highest body of state authority, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, All-Union Supreme Soviet. It ...
supposedly suppressed this information, to prevent bad publicity during the height of the
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
.
The evidence cited to support Lost Cosmonaut theories is generally regarded as inconclusive, 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
fall of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of Nationalities, Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. :s: ...
in the early 1990s, much previously restricted information has been made available, including information on
Valentin Bondarenko, a would-be cosmonaut, whose death during training on Earth was
covered up by the Soviet government. Even with the availability of published Soviet archival material and memoirs of Russian space pioneers, no evidence has emerged to support the Lost Cosmonaut theories. Ilyushin, who died in 2010, also never gave any support to conspiracy theories.
Allegations
Purported Czechoslovakian information leak
In December 1959, an alleged high-ranking Czechoslovakian Communist leaked information about many purported unofficial space shots. Alexei Ledovsky was mentioned as being launched inside a converted
R-5A rocket. Three more names of alleged cosmonauts claimed to have perished under similar circumstances were Andrei Mitkov, Sergei Shiborin and Maria Gromova.
[''The first Soviet cosmonaut team: their lives, legacy, and historical impact''](_blank)
, p. 226. Colin Burgess, Rex Hall. Springer. (2009) In December 1959, the Italian news agency Continentale repeated the claims that a series of cosmonaut deaths on suborbital flights had been revealed by a high-ranking Czechoslovakian communist. Continentale identified the cosmonauts as Alexei Ledowsky, Serenty Schriborin, Andrei Mitkow, and Maria Gromova.
No other evidence of Soviet sub-orbital crewed flights ever came to light.
High-altitude equipment tests
A 1959 edition of ''
Ogoniok
''Ogoniok'' ( rus, Огонёк, Ogonyok, t=Spark, p=ɐɡɐˈnʲɵk, a=Ru-огонёк.ogg; pre-reform orthography: Огонекъ) was one of the oldest weekly illustrated magazines in Russia.
History and profile
''Ogoniok'' was first issue ...
'' published an article and photos of three high-altitude parachutists: Colonel
Pyotr Dolgov, Ivan Kachur, and Alexey Grachov. Official records state that Dolgov 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 . The helmet visor of Dolgov's
Sokol space suit hit part of the gondola as he exited, depressurizing the suit and killing him.
[ Yaroslav Golovanov ''Cosmonaut #1'', Izvestia, 1986.
] Kachur is known to have disappeared around this time; his name has become linked to this equipment.
Grachov is thought to have been involved, with Dolgov and Kachur, in testing the high-altitude equipment. Russian journalist Yaroslav Golovanov suggested that high-altitude testing was exaggerated into a story that those parachutists died on a space flight.
In late 1959, ''Ogoniok'' carried pictures of a man identified as 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.
Yaroslav Golovanov, who researched the lost cosmonaut claims in his book, ''Cosmonaut #1'', found and interviewed the real Alexey Timofeyevich Belokonov, a retired high-altitude parachutist. In this interview, Belokonov revealed more about his colleagues Dolgov, Kachur, Mikhailov, Grachov, Zavadovsky and Ilyushin, and confirmed they never flew to space. According to Belokonov, in 1963, after ''
New York Journal American'' published an article on lost cosmonauts, listing the parachutists among them, Soviet newspapers ''
Izvestia
''Izvestia'' ( rus, Известия, r=Izvestiya, p=ɪzˈvʲesʲtʲɪjə, "The News") is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Russia. Founded in February 1917, ''Izvestia'', which covered foreign relations, was the organ of the Supreme Soviet of th ...
'' and ''
Krasnaya Zvezda'' published a refutation that included testimonies and photographs of the actual parachutists Belokonov, Kachur, Grachov and Zavadovsky. The parachutists also wrote an angry letter to ''New York Journal American'' editor
William Randolph Hearst, Jr., which he ignored.
Robert Heinlein's speculation
In 1960, the science fiction author
Robert A. Heinlein wrote in his article ''Pravda means 'Truth'' (reprinted in ''
Expanded Universe
The term expanded universe, sometimes called an extended universe, is generally used to denote the "extension" of a media franchise (like a television program or a series of feature films) with other media, generally comics and original novels. ...
'') that on May 15, 1960, while traveling in
Vilnius
Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...
, in
Soviet Lithuania, he was told by Red Army cadets that the Soviet Union had launched a human into orbit that day, but later the same day, it was denied by officials. Heinlein speculated that
Korabl-Sputnik 1 was an orbital launch, later said to be uncrewed, and that the retro-rockets had fired in the wrong attitude, making recovery efforts unsuccessful.
According to Gagarin's biography, these rumours were likely started as a result of two Vostok missions equipped with dummies (including a mannequin known as
Ivan Ivanovich) and human voice tape recordings (to test if the radio worked) that were made just prior to Gagarin's flight.
In a U.S. press conference on February 23, 1962, Colonel Barney Oldfield revealed that an uncrewed space capsule had indeed been orbiting the Earth since 1960, as it had become jammed into its booster rocket. According to the
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...
NSSDC Master Catalog,
Korabl Sputnik 1, designated at the time 1KP or Vostok 1P, did launch on May 15, 1960 (one year before Gagarin). It was a prototype of the later
Zenit and
Vostok launch vehicle
A launch vehicle is typically a rocket-powered vehicle designed to carry a payload (a crewed spacecraft or satellites) from Earth's surface or lower atmosphere to outer space. The most common form is the ballistic missile-shaped multistage ...
s. The onboard TDU (Braking Engine Unit) had ordered the
retrorockets to fire to recover, but due to a malfunction of the
attitude control system, the spacecraft was oriented upside-down, and the firing put the craft into a higher orbit. The
re-entry
Atmospheric entry (sometimes listed as Vimpact or Ventry) is the movement of an object from outer space into and through the gases of an atmosphere of a planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite. Atmospheric entry may be ''uncontrolled entry ...
capsule lacked a heat shield as there were no plans to recover it. Engineers had planned to use the vessel's telemetry data to determine if the guidance system had functioned correctly, so recovery was unnecessary.
The Torre Bert recordings
Vladimir Ilyushin
Moon-shot allegations
The Soviet Union lost the crewed Moon-landing phase of the
Space Race
The Space Race (, ) was a 20th-century competition between the Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between t ...
to the United States. However, some sources claim that just before the historic
Apollo 11
Apollo 11 was a spaceflight conducted from July 16 to 24, 1969, by the United States and launched by NASA. It marked the first time that humans Moon landing, landed on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin l ...
flight to the Moon, the Soviets undertook a hasty attempt to beat the Americans. Despite the unsuccessful first test launch of the new Soviet
N1 rocket on 21 February 1969, it is alleged that a decision was made to send a crewed
Soyuz 7K-L3 craft to the Moon using an N1. This attempt is alleged to have occurred on 3 July 1969, when it ended in an explosion, destroying the launch pad and killing the cosmonauts on board. Official sources state that the L3 was not ready for crewed missions. Its lunar lander, the
LK, had been tested a few times but its orbiter, the
7K-LOK, had not been successfully tested by the closing of the Moon-landing program at the end of 1974. The closing of the program was officially denied and maintained top secret until 1990 when the government allowed them to be published under the policy of ''
glasnost
''Glasnost'' ( ; , ) is a concept relating to openness and transparency. It has several general and specific meanings, including a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information and the inadmissi ...
''.
This claim correlates with the late hoax about the unsuccessful Moon-shot flight of Andrei Mikoyan. In reality, the second launch, like the first, was a test of the booster and was therefore uncrewed. Even if cosmonauts had been on board, they would have been rescued by its
launch escape system
A launch escape system (LES) or launch abort system (LAS) is a crew-safety system connected to a space capsule. It is used in the event of a critical emergency to quickly separate the capsule from its launch vehicle in case of an emergency requiri ...
, which carried the dummy payload to safety from the pad.
Other allegations
In 1959, pioneering space theoretician
Hermann Oberth claimed that a pilot had been killed on a
sub-orbital
A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched. Hence, it will not complete one orbital revolution, will no ...
ballistic flight from
Kapustin Yar
Kapustin Yar () is a Russian military training area and a rocket launch complex in Astrakhan Oblast, about 100 km east of Volgograd. It was established by the Soviet Union on 13 May 1946. In the beginning, Kapustin Yar used technology, material ...
in early 1958. He provided no source for the story.
Confirmed hoaxes
Ivan Istochnikov
Officially
Soyuz 2 was an uncrewed spacecraft that was the docking target for
Soyuz 3. However, Mike Arena, an American journalist, allegedly found in 1993 that an 'Ivan Istochnikov' and his dog 'Kloka', who were manning Soyuz 2, disappeared on October 26, 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.
Ivan Istochnikov: El cosmonauta fantasma
'', '' El Mundo Magazine'', May 25, 1997. Following the links, we fin
the announcement
of the Fontcuberta exposition.
The entire story was found to be a hoax perpetrated by
Joan Fontcuberta[Sputnik Foundation](_blank)
Notice the "PURE FICTION" text in red text over a red background. as a 'modern art exercise' that included falsified mission artifacts, various
digitally manipulated images, and immensely detailed feature-length biographies that 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
Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...
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 "truth".
[Istochnikov](_blank)
at the Encyclopedia Astronautica
The ''Encyclopedia Astronautica'' is a reference web site on Space exploration, space travel. The encyclopedia includes 79,433 articles with 13,741 illustrations, a comprehensive catalog of missiles, spacecraft, space technology, astronauts, an ...
.
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.
This story, which circulated in 2000, may have been based on the plot of an episode of the television series ''
The Cape''. The episode "Buried in Peace" first aired on October 28, 1996. In it, a Space Shuttle crew on a mission to repair a communications satellite encounters a derelict Soviet
spacecraft
A spacecraft is a vehicle that is designed spaceflight, to fly and operate in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including Telecommunications, communications, Earth observation satellite, Earth observation, Weather s ...
with a dead crew—the result of a secret attempt to beat the United States to the Moon in the 1960s. Tom Nowicki played Major Andrei Mikoyan, a Russian member of the Space Shuttle crew in the story.
Later allusions
* While the 1964 U.S. edition of the ''
Guinness Book of World Records
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a British reference book published annually, listi ...
'' credits Gagarin's Vostok 1 as "earliest successful manned satellite", a footnote names nine putative lost cosmonauts: eight mentioned above (Ledovsky, Schiborin, Mitkov, Belokonev, Kachur, Grachev, Dolgov, and Ilyushin) and Gennadiy Mikhailov (named by the Judica-Cordiglia brothers).
*
Julius Epstein wrote several papers on "Soviet failures in Space", including allegations of lost cosmonauts, which were read into the ''
Congressional Record
The ''Congressional Record'' is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress, published by the United States Government Publishing Office and issued when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record Ind ...
'' in 1965 and 1971.
* In 1993, ''
Sun
The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...
'', a U.S.
supermarket tabloid, ran a story recounting multiple cosmonaut deaths and ensuing body recovery missions between 1968 and 1988.
* In 2010 the Canadian band
Wolf Parade released a song titled "Yulia", which lead singer
Dan Boeckner confirmed in an interview as recounting a lost cosmonaut.
See also
*
List of spaceflight-related accidents and incidents
References
Inline citations
General references
Encyclopedia Astronautica: Phantom cosmonauts*
James Oberg (1988). ''Uncovering Soviet Disasters: Exploring the Limits of Glasnost'',
Random House
Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...
,
*
Yaroslav Golovanov ''Cosmonaut #1'', Izvestia, 1986.
*
Pavel Toufar, 2002–2003, Kruty vesmir, Akcent, , 58–258
* Pavel Toufar, 2001, Vzestup a pad Jurije Gagarina, Regia,
Alexander Zheleznyakov, Gagarin was still the first
''Komsomolskaya pravda'' newspaper (in Russian)''Uchitelskaya gazeta'' (in Russian)Ren-TV story (in Russian)
External links
Encyclopedia Astronautica
The Lost Cosmonauts web site with the audio recordingsThe Lost Cosmonauts web site archived from 2018*
{{Spaceflight
Conspiracy theories in Russia
Conspiracy theories involving communism
Death conspiracy theories
Fictional astronauts
Fictional Soviet people
Pseudohistory
Russian urban legends
Space and astronomy conspiracy theories
Space program of the Soviet Union