How a Spanish Artist Started a Weird Conspiracy About Russia's Soyuz 2 Mission

Built in the 1960s, the Soyuz spacecraft is currently the only means for astronauts to reach the International Space Station, making it the longest-flying spacecraft in history. It was the three-man answer to NASA's two-man Gemini: maneuverable in orbit and carried the possibility of taking men to the Moon. But the Soyuz program did not get off to a good start.

Though designed with the future in mind, the first spacecraft was launched with known defects. Problems started right after Soyuz 1 launched on April 23, 1967, forcing the cancellation of the primary mission goal: a rendezvous and crew transfer with the Soyuz 2 mission that would launch the next day. Soyuz 1, with cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov on board, was brought back immediately but the landing sequence was defective. The parachutes failed, and the spacecraft slammed into the ground full force, leaving Komarov's heel bone as the largest piece among the debris.

In the year and a half between Soyuz 1 and 2, the problems with the spacecraft were fixed. But it was still a devastating mission to follow. No one wanted a repeat of the same disastrous end.

On October 25, 1968, Soyuz 2 was finally launched successfully. The craft was designed to dock with a later Soyuz 3 flight, and as such it was unmanned. But that didn't stop rumors from flying.

At 11:34 Moscow time on the morning of October 26, Soyuz 3 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan. Inside the spacecraft was Colonel Georgy T. Beregovoy. At 47, he was the oldest man in space at the time, and his mission was an important one for the Soviet space program: rendezvous and dock with Soyuz 2.

Soyuz 2 achieved orbit the morning before Beregovoy launched without incident. After two adjustments, Soyuz 3 came within 650 feet of Soyuz 2 less than two hours after launch. Taking manual control, Beregovoy maneuvered towards his target spacecraft but couldn't reach it. Just 150 feet from Soyuz 2, Soyuz 3 banked 180 degrees and Beregovoy couldn't regain control. The sudden change in orientation meant the two spacecraft flew further from one another before Beregovoy came around for another attempt. Again, Soyuz 3 rolled 180 degrees and missed its docking target. Further attempts were cancelled. Beregovoy was running low on fuel and needed to save enough for reentry.

After an uneventful, if exciting, flight that spanned nearly four days, Beregovoy's retrorockets slowed his orbit and he reentered the atmosphere. It was, perhaps, the most nail biting reentry for everyone involved, as Komarov's end was still fresh in everyone's mind. But nothing unexpected happened, and Beregovoy landed safely.

In the post flight analysis, there was great discussion and some controversy over the cause behind the failed rendezvous. Beregovoy steadfastly blamed the spacecraft's automatic guidance system, but senior officials blamed the pilot. They had justifiable cause: Beregovoy wasn't the best pilot, and had failed all prelaunch testing with scores of 2 (bad) out of a possible 5 (excellent). Though he managed a 4 (good) in a makeup test, it didn't entirely convince officials he was up to the complicated task of performing an orbital rendezvous and docking with a target spacecraft. But he flew regardless, and in true Cold War Soviet fashion, the missed objective was hidden from the public. When a journalist asked Beregovoy after the flight whether he'd managed to dock with Soyuz 2 or not, he replied simply that such an objective wasn't part of the mission plan.

That Beregovoy missed his main mission objective brings up a number of questions about why a cosmonaut with poor test scores was allowed to fly such an important mission, but it's not the only mystery around the flight. There's a very strange story that's sometimes linked to the Soyuz 2 flight, that when Beregovoy reached the target he found the hatch open and the crew gone.

The story goes that cosmonaut Ivan Istochnikov and his faithful dog Kloka launched aboard Soyuz 2 on October 25, 1968, then dissapeared during a routine spacewalk. All that was left with Beregovoy arrived was a meteorite battered spacecraft, a bottle of vodka orbiting the empty Soyuz, and a note. Soyuz 2's ghost crew was the real reason behind Soyuz 3's failed rendezvous and docking.

But this, of course, never happened; Soyuz 2 was Beregovoy's unmanned target. The story was perpetrated by Spanish artist Joan Fontcuberta as part of an exhibit to demonstrate the power photographs have to convince us a lie is true. Accompanying images of Istochnikov – the name is a rough Russian translation of Fontcuberta, who actually appears in the photographs – were biographies and mission documents relating to the Soyuz 2 mission.

There are elements of truth in this fantastic story. Komarov's death on the Soyuz 1 mission gave credence to the dangers of the Soyuz spacecraft, and the Soviets had launched dogs into space before on suborbital flight and an orbital mission with Sputnik 2 to gather biomedical data. The Soviet space program was even planning to send a dog to perform the first spacewalk, but sent cosmonaut Alexei Leonov outside instead to score a first before the Americans. The Istochnikov story was also in line with other phantom cosmonaut stories the Soviet Union promoted by playing voice transcripts on unmanned missions.

Part of Fontcuberta's 1998 exhibition, the Istochnikov story had no effect on the Soyuz 2/3 mission. But it did fool a lot of people. Despite notices that the exhibit was fiction in museums and on related literature, there remained those who sought to share the memory of the cosmonaut history erased. Instead, the real story of Soyuz 2 is the mission objective history has ignored.