Madrid Spain.- On April 12, 1961, for the first time, he traveled to space, and the Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin did it. after launch of the ship Vostok 1, from the Baikonur CosmodromeGagarin completed one orbit around the Earth in just over an hour.
Only 7 years after this world event, on March 27, 1968, the cosmonaut would lose his life, at the age of 34, due to the fall of the MiG-15UTI fighter plane, in which he was carrying out a training flight together with the experienced Vladimir Seriogin.
During the maneuver, communication with the plane was lost and the causes of the accident remain unclear to this day, although there are several theories, including that Seriogin had a heart attack and fell on one of the control levers.
Colonel Igor Kuznetsov, who studied the circumstances of the event, suggested that the MiG-15 could have had problems in one of the ventilation ducts, which would lead the pilots to carry out a risky maneuver to lose height, and thereby cause a descent. fatal.
However, one of the most supported theories is that of cosmonaut Alekséi Leónov, Gagarin’s partner, who suggested that the incident was accidentally caused by another plane, a Su-15 supersonic jet that was being tested that day.
According to Leonov, the first man to perform a spacewalk, the jet had to fly at a height of 10,000 meters and not 500 meters as it did, which caused the shock wave to affect Gagarin’s flight.
According to the official Russian version, Gagarin and Vladimir Seriogin tried to dodge a hot air balloon, and the maneuver caused the accident; but Leonov has explained that, in the midst of the cold war, the Russian government did not want to recognize that the Russian hero’s accident was due to human error.
Russian authorities did not allow Leonov to publish his theory until 2013, still forbidding him to reveal the identity of the jet pilot.
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