Dobrovolsky,
Viktor Patsayev and
Vladislav Volkov flew on the
Soyuz 11 mission and were the world's first and last three crew to
die during a space flight. After a normal
re-entry, the capsule was opened and the crew was found dead. It was discovered that a valve had opened just prior to leaving orbit that had allowed the capsule's atmosphere to
vent away into space, suffocating the crew. Dobrovolsky's ashes were placed in an urn in the
Kremlin Wall Necropolis on
Red Square in Moscow. Among the pallbearers were
Alexei Leonov (who had been the prime-crew commander scheduled to launch on
Soyuz 11),
Vladimir Shatalov,
Andriyan Nikolayev, and American astronaut
Thomas P. Stafford. Dobrovolsky was posthumously awarded the title of
Hero of the Soviet Union, the
Order of Lenin, and the title of
Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR. ==References==