On the morning of June 30, 1971, near sunrise on the steppes of Kazakhstan, recovery crews prepared to receive the crew of Soyuz 11, which had completed a successful 24-day mission to the world’s first space station: Salyut 1. The Soviet leadership and public were eager to welcome cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolski, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev home after they broke the world spaceflight endurance record of 18 days, set a year earlier by their countrymen aboard Soyuz 9.
The Soyuz 11 descent module’s parachute system started to deploy as planned, at approximately 10 kilometers in altitude, and the main parachute deployed nominally. There had not been communications with the crew since before the deorbit burn, but ground crews were preparing for what they expected would be a nominal return from orbit.