explosion that ruptured the fuel tank. The explosion resulted in the ejection seat clamping down on Golovin. The cockpit filled with smoke and gas, limiting his sight while kerosene began filling the cockpit. With the threat of an uncontrollable fire imminent and Golovin unable to parachute out, he managed to make an emergency landing of the stricken fighter, refusing to abandon his comrade even after Golovin and their commander ordered him to evacuate the aircraft and save himself. From 1958 to 1960, he flew cosmonauts-in-training including Yuri Gagarin on a modified Tu-104 for practicing tasks in weightlessness, starting off as a co-pilot for Yuri Garnaev in the procedure. His other work included testing the NM-1, which he made the first flight in on 7 April 1959, but later tests of the aircraft eventually went to Rady Zakharov after Amet-khan was briefly hospitalized and temporarily grounded from flying due to health complications of long flight work, although he was eventually barred from flying high-speed aircraft altogether. For his work as a test pilot he was awarded the prestigious title "Honoured Test Pilot of the USSR" on 23 September 1961. In his career he mastered 96 aircraft types and accumulated an excess of 4,237 flight hours. Amet-khan died on 1 February 1971 at the age of 50 while piloting a modified Tu-16. The interior of the cabin was modified to function as a flying laboratory and the flight was conducted to test a new jet engine. All five airmen aboard the plane were killed in the crash. The cause of the crash remained classified for a long time, leading to speculation about the causes of it, and suggestions it was caused by uncontained engine failure from the new engine being tested, but the official conclusion released to the public states that is crash was caused by breakage of the outer flaps, which were in landing position when the plane was accelerating to an instrument speed of over 500 km/h, leading to the aircraft flipping and breaking up mid-air; however, the exact reason for why or how the flaps were positioned that way have not been determined, since the fire from the ensuing disaster damaged the fuselage. A memorial to the pilots killed in the crash was constructed and Amet-khan was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery with full honours. His funeral was attended by a variety of famous people from the Soviet Union,