Outposts on the Frontier: A Fifty-Year History of Space Stations (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight)

by Jay Chladek

  The docked configuration of two Soyuz spacecraft and the Salyut core also had engineers on the ground evaluating whether Salyut 6’s control system was compensating properly for the revised center of mass. These tests were fairly simple, as they involved the crewmembers making jostling movements inside the station while engineers on the ground monitored how well the forces would dampen out and see if any resonance vibrations remained. Resonance vibrations at the right frequencies, when left unchecked, can sometimes lead to metal fatigue and equipment failure, two things engineers do not want to see.

  All too soon, it was time to end the joint mission. The crews transferred their Sokol pressure suits and seat liners between the spacecraft, and Soyuz 26 was powered up for a systems check on 15 January. The next day, Dzhanibekov and Makarov bid their friends farewell and undocked for an uneventful return journey to Earth. The main reason for the mission’s short length was due to conditions in the prime recovery area. While technically a rocket can launch everyday when the station’s orbit crosses over the launch and recovery areas, there was only a ten-day period where the spacecraft can land in daylight conditions. This daylight period occurred only once during each fifty-six-day orbital cycle of Salyut 6. For most future missions, the spacecraft would launch at the beginning of the daylight window and land at the end. Soyuz 26 with its ferry crew landed safely with no problems. With their comrades safely home, Romanenko and Grechko continued their long-duration mission, but they would not have long to wait for their next “visitor.”

  Progress Docks

  On 20 January the first Progress cargo craft lifted off from Baikonur. Inside the pressurized cargo section of the Progress were food and water supplies, in addition to the experimental Splav materials-processing furnace. The Progress also included fuel to top off Salyut 6’s tanks. Two days after launch, the Progress was visible in the station’s window as it made an automatic rendezvous with the station. For safety reasons, the crew retreated to the Soyuz ferry and sealed the hatch, in case a problem during docking caused a hull breach. Thankfully, the Progress glided in for a proper docking with no mishaps. A few hours later, after the seal integrity was checked, the cosmonauts opened the hatch to their new care package.

  Many crewmembers on the Salyut stations and on Mir and the ISS have described the arrival of a Progress as the equivalent to a mail call on an oceangoing ship or at a remote base. It is also a little like opening a present on Christmas. In addition to vital equipment, consumables, food, and scientific supplies, a Progress can also be packed with letters and reading materials, along with fresh fruits and vegetables, for the crew. The fresh produce is prized by crewmembers, not just because of its nutritional value, but also because the aromas help to give them a nice reminder of home. To a person assigned to spend months inside a sealed environment the size of a bus where every smell, inside view, and taste is familiar, the introduction of fresh food can improve a crewmember’s morale in many intangible ways. The crew unloaded the supplies, and the first fuel transfer in orbit between a Progress and a Salyut also took place with no mishaps. Everything was shaping up to be a textbook mission.

  Over the entire course of Salyut 6’s life in orbit, it would host a total of twelve Progress spacecraft dockings on the rear port. Some would come in very quick succession for critical mission supply needs, while others were spaced out in regular intervals between manned dockings of Soyuz ferries. The Progress has become a familiar sight since its first use, and the design has given decades of sterling performance with very few problems.

  The Splav furnace was up and running within a few days. It would eventually be joined by two Kristall furnaces on successive Progress flights. Spare parts were used to fix some balky equipment, and the cosmonauts continued their daily routine of exercise, experiments, and photography of regions in Siberia with the MKF-6M system. Progress 1 was eventually loaded up with trash from the station and undocked soon after. It was then commanded to reenter the atmosphere, where it burned up on 8 February.

  “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”: The Intercosmos Program

  The next spacecraft to visit Salyut 6 was Soyuz 28. Since the current Salyut crew’s mission was drawing to a close, no ferry swap would be needed. The task of flying Soyuz 28 would go to Salyut 4 veteran Alexei Gubarev. The Soyuz ferry could be flown by one person, meaning there would be an empty seat available for a passenger acting in a simple support role. The second seat would be occupied by a Czechoslovakian cosmonaut named Vladimir Remek, flying as part of the Soviet program Intercosmos.

  31. Remek from Czechoslovakia (left) and Gubarev (right) would fly the first Intercosmos mission to Salyut 6. Courtesy of the author.

  The Intercosmos program was started in the late 1960s and created to allow nations allied with the Soviet Union to actively take part in space research. In the 1970s it was expanded to include manned spaceflights. This was likely in response to NASA’s intentions to fly noncareer astronauts from Western countries on the space shuttle as payload specialists. The Soviets were able to start their Intercosmos program first, while NASA’s space shuttle was experiencing development delays.

  Vladimir Remek came from a military family; his father was a general in the Czech armed forces and a deputy minister of defense. Remek became a military pilot in 1970 and held the rank of colonel in the Czech Air Force. For this flight, he was given the title of research cosmonaut. This title has been used since to describe Soyuz crewmembers on short-duration missions who are not career cosmonauts. Research cosmonauts typically undergo training for about two years before being assigned to a flight.

  Soyuz 28 successfully launched on 2 March 1978 and successfully docked with Salyut 6 a couple of days later. Romanenko and Grechko welcomed their new visitors with open arms; in Grechko’s case, it made for a nice reunion with his old crewmate from Salyut 4. Like the previous short-duration crew, the newcomers took part in a battery of medical tests to see how well they adapted to space. Remek also took part in a brief set of experiments for Czech researchers, including taking images of his country with the MKF-6M system, but he wasn’t allowed to integrate too much with the Salyut crewmembers, as his instructions were to not interfere with their research.

  Indeed, Remek remarked rather wryly after the mission that his hand got red soon after he arrived on board. If it got too close to a piece of equipment, one of the Soviet cosmonauts would slap it and say, “Don’t touch that!” It isn’t entirely known if he was joking or serious. Even with the apparent personality disconnect, the Soviets got a lot of good public relations from the mission and announced plans to fly research cosmonauts from other countries on future missions. Soyuz 28 undocked and successfully returned to Earth with Gubarev and Remek on 10 March.

  Six days later, Romanenko and Grechko turned over Salyut 6 to automated control and boarded Soyuz 27 to return home. Most of their experiment results had been sent home with the two previous short-duration crews, so there wasn’t much left for them to take home. They had set an orbit record of ninety-six days and were none the worse for wear when they landed, except for a severe toothache that Romanenko had been suffering from for almost a month, which required a dental visit after their landing.

  Physically the two men were in excellent shape with no apparent lasting effects from their space mission, aside from the challenges of having to readapt to Earth’s gravity. As with the many cosmonauts and astronauts who came before them and after them on long-duration spaceflights, waking up during the first few days back on Earth had Romanenko and Grechko trying to swim out of bed as if they were still weightless and finding that objects on Earth don’t float like they do in zero gravity when they are let go of in midair. But other than having to relearn how to live in one gravity again, doctors felt it should be possible with proper preparations and exercise on orbit to have cosmonauts live up to a year in space and perhaps longer.

  Further Salyut 6 Successes

  While Salyut was designed for long-duration missions with multiple crews, t
he next crew would not be launched until three months after Romanenko and Grechko returned and all their test results had been evaluated. Some tweaks were made to the training program based on the findings and the experiences of this record-setting crew.

  The next long-duration crew of Vladimir Kovalyonok and Aleksandr Ivanchenkov launched into orbit aboard Soyuz 29 on 15 June 1978 and successfully docked the next day. For Kovalyonok, it was his first mission to Salyut 6 since the failed Soyuz 25 docking, making him the first two-time visitor to the station, even though he was unable to enter Salyut on his last visit. The crew got down to business and continued the work started by their predecessors, finding that Salyut 6 had weathered its three months of hibernation just fine. Periodic reboosts of the station’s orbit took place, experiments were conducted, and the crew continued their rigorous physical exercise regime.

  Kovalyonok and Ivanchenkov hosted the crew of Soyuz 30, who launched on 27 June. Aboard the Soyuz was veteran Pyotr Klimuk and Polish Intercosmos participant Mirosław Hermaszewski. Hermaszewski was born in 1941 in the town of Lipniki, which is part of present day Ukraine. He witnessed the horrors of World War II firsthand as a young child and became a military pilot in 1965. He was selected for the Intercosmos program from five hundred pilot candidates; to this day, he is the only citizen from Poland to fly in space. This short-duration mission went well, although cloud cover prevented the Pole from shooting good pictures of his native country with the MKF-6M system. He shot images of the Ukraine and Russia instead. Images of Poland would later be taken by the resident cosmonauts after the Soyuz 30 crew returned to Earth on 5 July.

  The crew conducted a scheduled EVA on 29 July. For this task, they opened up the side airlock door of the forward transfer compartment for the very first time. The mission tasks were simple: retrieval of the Medusa cassette left outside by the first crew and retrieval of additional exposure cassettes that had been mounted outside the station since the day it launched. They also evaluated the EVA handholds built on the station’s exterior. With all their tasks finished sooner than planned, the cosmonauts spent the final portion of their allotted EVA time outside enjoying a view in their helmets that was more spectacular than what Salyut 6’s windows could produce.

  The next Progress module to arrive was loaded to the gills with supplies. In addition to the normal food and consumables, a guitar had been flown up at Ivanchenkov’s request, along with two sets of fur boots to help with their cold feet. The chill was a side effect of reduced blood flow to the lower extremities of the body in weightlessness. The guitar was a nice morale booster for the crew, as both it and the boots were put to use immediately.

  The crew next hosted Soyuz 31, flown on a regularly scheduled ferry-swapping mission starting on 27 August. In command of that mission was Vostok 5 veteran Valery Bykovsky flying his third and final space mission, and accompanying him was East German Intercosmos research cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn. As with the other Intercosmos flights, Jähn conducted much of the same research as his predecessors; like them, he was a military pilot before being selected for cosmonaut training. Upon return to Earth, the German Democratic Republic proclaimed him the first German space traveler, rather than saying he was simply the first East German citizen to venture into orbit. The newcomers returned home uneventfully with the older spacecraft on 3 September.

  On 7 September, Kovalyonok and Ivanchenkov boarded Soyuz 31 to undock from the station’s aft port and redock with the front port. This was necessary, as the fuel transfer lines used by Progress were only present in the aft docking port. The crew prepared for undocking as if they were coming home from a mission, in case a situation developed that would prevent them from redocking. This involved equipment shutdowns, loading the Soyuz with their experiment results, and putting the station in hibernation mode. But the undocking, the rotation of the station 180 degrees on command from the ground, and the manual flying by Kovalyonok to realign Soyuz 31 with the front docking port took place smoothly. The crew redocked and resumed their habitation of the station with no problems. Using the station to realign its orientation with its onboard control-moment gyros meant that the Soyuz ferry only used its thrusters to back up, station keep, and then close in to redock with the front, while saving precious fuel in the process. It was the first time such a maneuver had taken place with a space station, but it would not be the last.

  After a regular Progress visit in October, the crew spent the final few days before their 2 November 1978 return putting the station in hibernation mode once again. The crew had maintained a steady exercise program to stay in peak physical condition. Upon their return to Earth, they had spent 139 days in orbit, which shattered the previous mark by over a month. Physically the crew was in very good shape, and the scientists put the cosmonauts through a battery of tests when they returned. Except for a finding that red blood cells produced entirely in weightless conditions are smaller than normal ones on Earth, the crew suffered no long-term effects. The door was open for future long-duration occupancy.

  Salyut 6 Save

  While the next crew got ready to fly to Salyut 6, the fuel-pressurization system was being evaluated by the ground, as it had apparently developed a leak, causing nitrogen gas to enter places it shouldn’t. If the reboost engines were fired, they would likely run rough due to nitrogen gas contamination. There was an additional concern that the corrosive fuel could seep into the nitrogen-pressurization bladders through the same leak and cause damage. While a previous station might have been abandoned after developing a problem like this, it was decided to attempt repairs. Salyut 6 had both a primary and a backup fuel system. If the leak could be isolated and the suspect system closed off, the station’s propulsion system would still operate. The repair procedure would require a Progress craft and cosmonauts to perform the needed tasks. Other pieces of equipment would soon need replacement as well, since they were nearing the end of their service lives.

  The Soyuz 32 crew of space rookie Vladimir Lyakhov and Soyuz 25 veteran Valery Ryumin would be tasked with doing the checkout and repair work. They would try to set a new space endurance record if they could, but for the first few days of the mission, they would make sure that Salyut 6 was ready to host additional crews by conducting methodical inspections of every piece of critical equipment. They would replace what they could and make a list of additional spare parts to be flown up on the next Progress. Soyuz 32 launched on 15 February 1979 and achieved a successful docking two days later.

  Progress 5 arrived at the station on 15 March with supplies and the requested spare parts. A week later, the crew got to work isolating the damaged fuel system. The procedure was an involved one, as Salyut 6 was commanded to begin an end-over-end spin, producing a small amount of gravity from centrifugal force. Nitrogen tetroxide fuel is heavier than nitrogen gas, so the gravity in combination with pressurizing the lines caused the fuel to empty out of the damaged tank and into the Progress. Once the damaged tank was purged, the spin was stopped by thrusters on the Progress, and the damaged lines were opened to space for about a week to boil off any remaining fuel vapors. Once that was completed, the lines were repressurized with nitrogen and then completely sealed off. Salyut 6’s engines worked just fine after the repairs were completed.

  Experiments conducted for the first time on this mission included the hatching of fertilized quail eggs launched with the crew to monitor the development of complex embryos in weightlessness. The crew also conducted the first repair in orbit using a soldering iron to fix a malfunctioning video recorder, in addition to their other tasks of furnace processing, plant growth, and imagery of Earth. It was shaping up to be a normal long-duration mission once again. As an added bonus, Progress 5’s supply load also included a television monitor, so the crew could conduct two-way television transmissions for the first time and see their colleagues and family on the ground, as opposed to just hearing them over a speaker. This would be a great boost to morale for future crews. Progress 5 was undocked on 3 April and burned up, its
mission completed.

  Soyuz 33 Rendezvous Failure

  On 10 April 1979, Soyuz 33, with cosmonaut Nikolai Rukavishnikov and Bulgarian research cosmonaut Georgi Ivanov, launched into orbit to conduct a short-duration Intercosmos mission to Salyut 6 and a Soyuz ferry transfer. About one thousand meters out, the Soyuz was supposed to conduct a six-second firing of its engines for its final rendezvous, when a problem developed. The craft began to shake violently, and the engine shut down after only a three-second burn. The Salyut crew reported seeing a strange plume from the Soyuz as the rocket exhaust seemed to fire sideways instead of from behind the craft. It was impossible to tell if the plume was coming from the Soyuz propulsion system itself or from an ignited cloud of propellant behind it.

  Rukavishnikov asked if he could continue the approach with thrusters and achieve a docking, but he was overruled by controllers. If the Soyuz had hidden damage, it would be a crippled craft and potentially useless in an emergency. There would be no docking for Soyuz 33. Coincidentally, Rukavishnikov was on the Soyuz 10 crew that failed to achieve a hard dock with the first Salyut. His second mission, on Soyuz 16, was an ASTP test flight. Rukavishnikov was again denied a chance to enter a Salyut in orbit.