The Firebird II was a spacecraft built by the Soviet Union in the early 1960s. It was designed to be launched into orbit by a powerful rocket, then fly to and land on Mars or Venus. The Firebird II never made it to space; it was destroyed in a launch accident in 1963.
The Firebird II was designed by Vladimir Chelomey, one of the Soviet Union’s leading aerospace engineers. Chelomey had been working on interplanetary spacecraft since the 1950s, and his design for the Firebird II drew on that experience.
The Firebird II was a cone-shaped spacecraft with three fins at its base. It had a crew cabin at its apex, and two liquid-fueled rockets mounted on either side of the cabin. These rockets would have been used to slow the spacecraft down as it entered the Martian or Venusian atmosphere, and to provide thrust for landing.
The Firebird II was equipped with scientific instruments for studying Mars or Venus from orbit, and for carrying out experiments on their surfaces. It also had a television camera and an infra-red telescope for observing astronomical objects.
The first test flight of the Firebird II took place in 1961, when it was launched atop a modified R-7 ICBM rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The rocket failed soon after launch, and theFirebird II crashed back down to Earth. Undeterred, Chelomey continued work on the project.
A second test flight took place in 1963, again from Baikonur Cosmodrome. This time, everything went according to plan until shortly after liftoff, when one of the strap-on boosters attached to the rocket’s first stage malfunctioned and exploded. The resulting damage causedthe rocket to lose control and break up in mid-air; all seven crew members onboard were killed instantly. The remains oftheFirebird II fell back down onto Kazakh territory near Lake Balkhash.