Andrea Zullo

This article reinterprets the fatal Soviet Soyuz 1 space mission not only as the result of contingent political pressures but, also, as a documented case of an operational model in which the crew was explicitly intended to compensate for known technical shortcomings. An analysis of 7K-OK program documentation—including 1966 training programs and prelaunch operational decisions—indicates that this approach structurally lowered the risk acceptance threshold. The accident revealed an inherent limit: where critical functions did not allow for operational recovery, human intervention could not substitute for architectural redundancy. Post-accident technical responses selectively confirm this interpretation.

A reading of declassified CIA documents (1964–1968) on how US intelligence understood the Soviet space programme. Washington saw clearly what the Soviet system was forced to expose — the medical and training complex, the academic figures, even equipment bought in the West — but stayed blind to the engineering core it protected: the design bureaus and their chiefs. The article traces where American analysis was sharp (deducing the N1's existence years before its first flight), where it failed (missing that first launch in 1969), and how, when data ran short, rumour filled the gap.

This July marks fifty years since the first fully successful mission on the surface of Mars. It was 20 July 1976 when the Viking 1 lander touched down in Chryse Planitia and returned the first readable photograph ever obtained from the soil of the red planet. It was not the first human-made object to get there: as early as 1971 the Soviet Mars 2 and Mars 3 had reached the surface, but the former crashed and the latter fell silent after a few seconds, sending back nothing of use. With Viking, robotic exploration truly began, and over half a century it has allowed us to reconstruct the history and possible past habitability of the prime target in the search for life beyond Earth. What were the first studies carried out on Mars by the Viking programme? Have we really stopped looking for evidence of past life? And why have we, human beings, not landed there yet? The article retraces the progression of the robotic exploration of Mars, trying to understand why reaching it is so difficult, through milestones and failures.