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Valentin Vasiliyevich Bondarenko (February 16, 1937 in Kharkov, Ukrainian SSR - March 23, 1961 in Moscow, USSR ) was a Soviet cosmonaut of Ukrainian descent. He rose to the rank of Second Lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force, and was selected for cosmonaut training on April 4, 1960. On March 23, 1961, he was killed during a fire in a pressurized chamber. He was married and had one child. The accident that killed Valentin Bondarenko was caused by a flash fire in a training simulator that had been pressurized with pure oxygen. During the test Bondarenko had biosensors attached to his body. When he removed these, he washed the skin area with a piece of cotton wool soaked in alcohol. In an act of carelessness Bondarenko threw away the piece of cotton wool without looking at the direction he threw the piece in, and the cotton wool landed on an electric stove hot plate, where it ignited. In the oxygen-rich atmosphere a flash fire followed that set fire to Bondarenko's suit. The observing technician saw the fire and attempted to open the door to the chamber, but this took several minutes due to the pressure, and Bondarenko was badly burnt, dying sixteen hours later of shock. An attendant who treated him prior to death attested that he had suffered third-degree burns over much of his body. This is similar to the accident that befell the crew of the Apollo 1. The death was not announced and, as Bondarenko had appeared in group films and photos of the first cosmonaut group, it fuelled stories in the west of unnamed cosmonauts being killed during failed launches. The accident was only revealed to the outside world in the 1980s. The Bondarenko crater on the far side of the Moon is named after him.
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