The Gateway to Hell is CLOSING: Fire in mysterious giant crater that has been burning for 50 years after blundering Soviet scientists set it alight is reduced to 'faint' blaze
But scientists now say that the gateway is finally closing.
This blazing pit was formed in 1971 when blundering Soviet scientists accidentally drilled into an underground pocket of gas and decided to light it on fire.
Since then, the gateway has become both one of the reclusive nation's leading tourist attractions and a major source of polluting methane emissions.
According to scientists, the flames in the crater are beginning to dim due to a reduced flow of natural flammable gas.
Officials say the fires are now three times smaller than in the past and can only be seen in the immediate vicinity.
Irina Luryeva, a director at state-owned energy company Turkmengaz told a fossil fuel conference this week: 'Before a huge glow from the blaze was visible from several kilometres away, hence the name "Gateway to Hell".
'Today only a faint source of combustion remains.'
The 'Gateway to Hell', known officially as the 'Shining of Karakum', is a 230-foot-wide (70m) sinkhole located in Turkmenistan's Karakum desert.
Located above a vast pocket of natural gas which continuously seeps towards the surface, the crater is lined with hundreds of gas fires which give it an unearthly glow.
The exact origin of the pit was covered up by officials when the country was part of the Soviet Union, leaving behind no official record of the incident.
However, the most commonly accepted theory is that the pit was created by a natural gas prospecting accident.
During the 1970s a rogue soviet gas drilling station punctured a gas pocket and collapsed through the ground, forming a crater which began to leak gas into the air.
The scientists decided to ignite the crater to prevent the toxic gases from escaping and spreading further.
While these scientists might have expected the blaze to last for a few days before going out, the fires of the Gateway to Hell have been burning ever since.
Turkmenistan is estimated to have the world's fourth-largest reserves of natural gas, largely scattered in pockets beneath the desert.
What is the Gateway to Hell?
The Gateway to Hell, officially known as the Shining of Karakum, is a sinkhole located above a large pocket of natural gas in Turkmenistan's Karakum Desert.
As this gas seeps through the ground, it feeds fires which have been burning since the 1970s.
The pit is 230 feet wide (70m) and 98 feet deep (30m).
The Gateway to Hell is visited by an estimated 6,000 foreign visitors per year.
In 2013, Canadian explorer George Kourounis descended into the crater to collect soil samples.
His study revealed that simple organisms have been able to survive within the burning pit.
The crater is likely connected to this vast underground store of methane, giving it an almost unlimited supply of gas to burn.
This burning pit caused by a Soviet-era disaster has become something of an unlikely national treasure.
Turkmenistan's few tourists flock to the site to camp by the warmth of the burning methane and, in 2019, national leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov filmed himself driving a rally car around the pit to dispel rumours of his death.
However, in 2022 Berdymukhamedov announced that he wanted to be remembered as the leader who closed the gates to hell and launched a project to cut off the fires.
Speaking at the time, Mr Berdymukhamedov said: 'We are losing valuable natural resources for which we could get significant profits and use them for improving the well-being of our people.'
Since then, at least two new wells have been drilled around the pit to capture excess methane which would otherwise leak to the surface.
Older, decommissioned gas pumps in the area have also been reactivated to help draw away the natural gas.
According to the evidence from these nearby wells, the crater has seen a significantly reduced supply of gas.
This, in turn, has led to the infamous flames dwindling in size.
The announcement will come as good news to environmentalists concerned about Turkmenistan's record of natural gas leaks.
Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas which contributes heavily to climate change.
A recent study published by the International Energy Agency found that Turkmenistan was the world's largest emitter of methane through gas leaks, although the country disputes this claim.
Likewise, intelligence company Kayrros found that leaks from two fossil fuel fields in the country contributed more to global warming in 2022 than the UK's entire carbon emissions for the year.
While the fires at the Gateway to Hell did help burn off some of the escaping gas, the pit still leaks vast quantities of gas into the atmosphere.
Drawing off the natural gas into other wells where it can be safely stored and used to make energy would help the country cut its outsized carbon footprint.
Methane is a colourless, odourless flammable gas, and the main constituent of natural gas.
Methane is a greenhouse gas, and the second biggest cause of climate change after carbon dioxide.
It is also the primary component of natural gas, which is used to heat our homes.
When methane is burned as a fuel, it gives off carbon dioxide (CO2), and so is not directly emitted at that point.
However, across all points of the extraction, transport and storage processes there are leaks of natural gas that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
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"I viewed myself as having gone from a Cold War warrior, in terms of getting our programme to the Moon first, to one who was sent to try to see what we could do to cooperate [in space]," he said. "I was just 33 years old when I went to Moscow for the first time, representing the United States and I was thinking, 'Wow!'" The Soviet Union and United States had been competing in space since the launch of Sputnik-1 in 1957. But the idea of the world's two superpowers working together did not come completely out of the blue. "There were efforts for many years to find collaborative programmes between the United States and the Soviet Union in space," says Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator for Apollo and Apollo-Soyuz exhibitions at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. "There was an agreement [about exchanging meteorological data] signed between the US and the Soviet Union in October of 1962, and if you know about October of 1962, it was also the Cuban Missile Crisis when we came closer to nuclear war than ever before in history," says Muir-Harmony. "The space race was always this combination of cooperation and competition." By the 1970s, the Nixon White House was keen to reduce international tensions with the Soviet Union led by Leonid Brezhnev (the administration also opened-up dialogue with communist China) so Apollo-Soyuz was important diplomatically. But the endeavour had a very practical purpose – if spacecraft from different nations could dock with each other, they might be used to save stranded astronauts. "The question was, how do you rescue each other's crews in space?" says Kenneth Phillips, curator for aerospace science at the California Science Center. "It was a noble idea that space exploration and collaboration bind us together." When it came to astronauts assigned to the mission, the symbolism of the selection was also significant. The three-man US crew would include Deke Slayton, one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts. Grounded since 1962 because of a suspected heart condition, Slayton had finally been cleared to fly after watching from the sidelines as the other astronauts pioneered spaceflight and flew to the Moon. The two-man Soviet crew, meanwhile, would be led by Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space. If Russia's giant N1 Moon rocket had been successful, Leonov was slated to become the first man to walk on the Moon. The technical challenge of joining the two spacecraft was considerable. In appearance the spherical Soyuz and conical Apollo spacecraft are very different. Soyuz was only ever designed to operate in low Earth orbit, whereas the Apollo capsule was originally built to fly to the Moon (this particular capsule would have been Apollo 18). 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Handshakes and an exchange of gifts followed before US President Ford addressed the crew (Nixon had resigned in August 1974 after the Watergate scandal), expressing his "very great admiration for your hard work your total dedication in preparing for this first joint flight". After two days together, the spacecraft undocked to return to their homelands. But that wasn't the end of the story. "Apollo-Soyuz represented a big breakthrough in US-Soviet collaboration," says Svetla Ben-Itzhak, assistant professor of international relations and space security at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. "It set the precedent for peaceful cooperation in orbit – this is the moment where space diplomacy really started." The idea of space diplomacy is that space exploration unites nations with a – mutually beneficial – common goal and that collaboration can then extend back to Earth. "Science and engineering objectives can bring people together who did not think they necessarily could collaborate productively," says Phillips. "The notion of exploration is something that we can all understand." Apollo-Soyuz led to further cooperation between the superpowers and, with the fall of the Soviet Union, that relationship became closer still. In the 1990s, Space Shuttle missions flew to the Russian space station Mir – with crews from both countries living and working together for months on end. It was followed by the International Space Station (ISS), a collaborative effort between 14 countries with the US and Russia at its heart. Even since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russians, Americans and Western allies continue to work together in orbit on the ISS. "It is absolutely amazing that this cooperation in space aboard the International Space Station continues, even when tensions on the ground have intensified and sanctions imposed against Russia, including in the space sector," says Ben-Itzhak. "Yet 450km (280 miles) above the Earth, we are still collaborating and working together." To some extent Russia and the US have no choice but to work together. The ISS is designed so the various national segments are interdependent. If one partner pulls the plug, then the station will fail. The ISS partners are essentially trapped in a toxic marriage, although on the station itself all the astronauts reportedly get along fine. Ben-Itzhak studies what she has termed "space blocs" – the emerging groupings of space nations. Right now, as countries plan a return to the Moon, it looks like the US and Russians will soon go their separate ways. Russia will likely side with China, and Western nations – including Europe and Canada – will coalesce around the US. But there are also other blocs emerging, including Arab, African and Asian nations (India, for example, is fast becoming a significant space power). So, could the lessons learnt from the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project one day apply to the Moon? Both sides of this new space race are eyeing-up establishing bases at the lunar South Pole, even at the same crater. So, can Ben-Itzhak imagine handshakes and knock-knock jokes on the lunar surface? "Right now, I'm sorry to say it is very unlikely," she says. "It's actually worse than that… the Artemis Accords is an international agreement establishing norms of behaviour on the lunar surface, including peaceful exploration, transparency, emergency assistance and preserving the common heritage including the footprints left by the astronauts." "It's been accepted by 55 countries but not by China or Russia." More like this:• What happens when astronauts get stuck in space• Voyager: Inside the world's greatest space mission• Would you stay in a space hotel? As for Apollo-Soyuz, when I have mentioned to people that I'm writing this article, few – even in the space business – seem to have heard of it. The two sides of the mission are once again a world apart – both politically and literally. The Soyuz spacecraft is in the private Energia museum near Moscow and the Apollo capsule is now looked after by Phillips at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. He is, however, optimistic for the cooperative future of space exploration. "There is an international community that is waiting to collaborate in space," Phillips says. "If government structures permit that, then I think we can do some really incredible work together." As for Lunney, he went on to head up the Space Shuttle programme – America's next great space adventure. But, 50 years on, his leadership of Apollo-Soyuz deserves to be remembered for changing forever the way rival nations can learn to live and work together in space. -- For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
