The Explorers' Club, № MLXXXII

Operation AXIOM: The Space Race—The 50th Anniversary of the "April 5th Anamoly"
5 April 1975: CDR Vasily Lazarev & Flight Engineer Oleg Makarov lifted off from the Kazakh S.S.R.'s Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Soyuz 7K-T capsule atop a Soyuz rocket; callsign Ural ("Ural"); the launch aborted when the third-stage engine ignited before separating from the second stage; the duo suffered twenty-one g's during the abort & landed in deep snow in Siberia near the Chinese border.

Commentary: Colonel Lazarev never fully recovered from his injuries & never flew in space again. The Soviets were unusually forthcoming with information—to N.A.S.A., not to the Soviet citizenry—due to the ongoing preparations for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

The twenty-one-minute suborbital flight is also known as Soyuz 18a or Soyuz 18-1, to differentiate it from the successful orbital flight Soyuz 18 later in 1975. The search for images is complicated by Lazarev & Makarov previously flying Soyuz 12 together in 1973.

Bonus! Space Race Song o' the Day: The "April 5th Anamoly"
Dennis McCarthy, "Out of Control/The Crash" from Star Trek Generations: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Space Cadet Mike Papa Whiskey)

Semper exploro.