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

by Jay Chladek

  Toward the end of June, the crew dismantled several pieces of equipment from Salyut 7 to take back to Mir. Included in the haul were a mapping camera, a low-light camera, two furnaces, an electrophoresis apparatus, biomedical gear, video equipment, unexposed and exposed film canisters, several spectrometers, and the two Orlan space suits. Their haul accounted for four hundred kilograms of equipment. On 25 June the crew finished “mothballing” the station and returned it to automatic flight before boarding the Soyuz for their return to Mir, which was now about one thousand kilometers in front of the Salyut. The crew spent a total of fifty days aboard Salyut 7 as its final resident crew.

  After a day of free flight, the crew again docked with Mir and off-loaded their gear. They would only spend a little over two weeks on board before returning home. It had been announced when the station was launched that Mir was intended for continuous occupation, but minor delays with the new Soyuz TM (TM standing for “Transport Modified”) design meant that it was not ready for a manned flight just yet. The first Soyuz TM had flown unmanned in May to test out the new systems, and it achieved a successful docking with Mir using the new Kurs system while the Soyuz T-15 crew was aboard Salyut 7. After a couple of days of docked operations, Soyuz TM-1 returned home successfully. Even with this success, it would take some time to analyze the flight data before allowing a crew to fly.

  Mir was not set up exactly like the previous Salyut stations. It was designed from the outset to be modular, expanding its capabilities as new modules were added. Part of the reason for this methodology was an attempt to reduce internal clutter. Deep into their missions, the walls of the Salyut stations were cluttered with bags of supplies and equipment racks. There was less room for cosmonauts to get around in something that began to resemble a storage closet more than a habitable living space. Mir’s plan was to reduce the clutter in the core module’s working compartment by placing the scientific equipment in add-on modules.

  Salyut 7’s End

  After Soyuz T-15’s visit, no additional crews were sent to Salyut 7. Previous practice would have had the old station perform a controlled deorbit to eventually burn up harmlessly over an ocean, but controllers on the ground decided to use this opportunity to monitor the complex in order to study the degradation of its systems. In August 1986 ground controllers used the remaining propellant aboard Cosmos 1686 to boost the orbit of the complex to over 450 kilometers in altitude.

  Salyut 7 spent the next five years in orbit while its systems were monitored before the orbit decayed. The station reentered Earth’s atmosphere on 7 February 1991. The initial impact projections predicted the complex would land in the southern Pacific Ocean, west of South America. But it overshot that area, and several debris fragments rained down over the city of Capitán Bermúdez in eastern Argentina. Fortunately, nobody on the ground was injured by the debris. While Salyut 7 did not enjoy the success of its illustrious predecessor Salyut 6, it still taught a lot of lessons that would be applied to future missions to Mir.

  Kvant 1

  It would be almost a year after Mir’s launch before the next crew would occupy the station. On 5 February 1987 the brand new Soyuz TM-2 spacecraft with veteran cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko and rookie Aleksandr Laveykin lifted off from Baikonur. As had been done with Soyuz T-15, the launch date and crew of Soyuz TM-2 were announced ahead of time. The crew docked with the Mir complex after flying a two-day rendezvous, encountering no problems with their new spacecraft. Laveykin apparently encountered some problems adapting to space, but after a few days, he was fine. For these flights to Mir, since long duration and continuous occupation were the key, the Soviets came up with a new system for mission designation. This was the second expedition to Mir, so it was referred to as Mir EO-2 (EO being a Russian acronym meaning “Principle Investigation”).

  On 31 March a Proton rocket lifted off from Baikonur carrying a new module called Kvant 1 (a Russian name meaning “Quantum”). It was a variation of the TKS spacecraft. The plan was for the TKS tug to dock its payload with Mir’s aft docking port, which to that point had only been used by the Progress resupply tugs. Once the new module was firmly docked, the tug would undock itself to expose a new aft docking port on the Kvant 1, which would be used for future spacecraft visits. This meant that the main engines in Mir’s core module would no longer be useable, but the Progress system proved itself to be more than capable of conducting orbital reboosts. The Kvant 1 had propellant lines to the Mir core, so Progress craft could still refill Mir’s thruster fuel supply.

  After five days, Kvant 1 caught up with Mir and began the final phase of its docking maneuvers using the Igla system. All went well until it lost transponder lock two hundred meters out. The attempt was aborted, but the slowly rolling TKS continued to approach. Luckily, it did not impact the station, although it came very close as it was seen slowly drifting by one of Mir’s portholes. After telemetry analysis discovered and corrected a software error, another docking attempt was made on 9 April. This time, the Kvant 1 managed to achieve a successful soft dock. However, the capture latches would not engage when the command was given to perform a hard dock. It seemed like something was obstructing it.

  Two days later, Romanenko and Laveykin performed an EVA using the Orlan suits brought over from Salyut 7. They climbed down the length of the core module (also known as the base block) to get to the aft port. Laveykin peered down toward the Mir docking port and saw something white fouling the port. The ground commanded Kvant 1’s probe to extend, opening up the gap so he could remove the problem. It turned out to be a cloth trash bag that had somehow worked its way loose and gotten stuck on Mir’s aft docking port when the previous Progress spacecraft departed. After Laveykin successfully removed the bag, ground controllers commanded the probe to retract again, and Kvant 1 achieved a successful hard dock with the Mir base block. Later that day, the TKS tug was released to fly free, exposing the new aft docking port for use by future Soyuz and Progress craft.

  Kvant 1 was only about one-third of the length of the Mir base block, but it was well-outfitted. The module was equipped with X-ray and ultraviolet telescopes, a wide-angle camera, additional X-ray experiments, and the “Svetlana” electrophoresis experiment unit. It also included an additional Elektron oxygen-generating system to supplement the one found in the Mir base block, an additional carbon dioxide scrubber system, and six additional gyrodynes to help control the orientation of the station. The module was also packed with supplies, including a folded solar array to place on the top of the Mir base block. The new array was installed during an EVA in June.

  A Syrian Visit and Crew Swap

  Soyuz TM-3 lifted off from Baikonur on 22 July 1987 and docked two days later on Mir’s new aft Kvant 1 port. The crew commanded by Aleksandr Viktorenko would perform a Soyuz ferry swap. While the new TM series Soyuz craft had the potential of staying docked for six months, it was not cleared for a full mission just yet, because the configuration was new and the Soviets were still evaluating it. Aleksandr Aleksandrov, a veteran of Salyut 7’s fourth expedition, was the flight engineer. His assignment was to replace Laveykin on orbit as part of the EO-2 crew. During the EVA conducted to remove the trash bag that fouled Kvant 1’s docking port, Laveykin developed an irregular heartbeat detected by a new biomedical apparatus he was testing, and he was temporarily banned from EVAs until it cleared up. While it eventually did, allowing him to perform a solar array attachment EVA in June, doctors on the ground were concerned enough to have him return home sooner than expected.

  Muhammed Faris would be the research cosmonaut on this flight. He was a military pilot from Syria and became the second Arab to fly in space. As with previous Intercosmos flights, the research cosmonaut would perform some short-duration experiments and use onboard instruments to photograph his home country. After nearly seven days on orbit, the crew boarded the TM-2 ferry and returned home. High winds almost blew the Soyuz descent module onto the top of a farmhouse, but it landed safely otherwise. Laveykin was take
n to a hospital to get looked over by top Soviet cardiac specialists. They gave him a clean bill of health and pronounced him fit to fly, but he would never fly in space again and retired from the cosmonaut program in 1994.

  Muhammed Faris continued his career in the Syrian military after his spaceflight. In 2011 a civil war broke out between Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government and opposition forces who wanted to see the dictator ousted. The Syrian uprising was inspired by the Arab Spring, which had taken place in other Middle Eastern countries during the previous years. The city of Allepo (Faris’s birthplace and hometown) became the front line for some of the fiercest fighting in the conflict, with thousands of refugees fleeing the area. Faris managed to defect to Turkey after several attempts and joined the Free Syrian Army in August of 2012.

  The new EO-2 crew of Romanenko and Aleksandrov docked the ferry at a different port a few days after TM-2’s departure and settled down for an additional six-month tour of duty with heavy photographic and spectral studies using Kvant 1’s equipment. Romanenko would be pushing the limit of human endurance on this flight to over three hundred days in space. It was originally planned for him to do it with Laveykin, but having Aleksandrov on board became a blessing, as the fresher cosmonaut ended up doing most of the heavy lifting toward the end since Romanenko was growing fatigued, even with the strict exercise regime.

  Orbital Handoff

  Relief was on the way as Soyuz TM-4 launched on 21 December 1987 with a two-member Mir EO-3 crew of Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov. Joining them was test pilot Anatoli Levchenko, one of the cosmonaut test pilots from the Soviet Buran shuttle program. As with Igor Volk’s mission to Salyut 7, the plan was to see if a short-duration spaceflight would degrade a cosmonaut’s flying skills, especially for the critical landing phase. Volk and Levchenko were assigned to be the commanders of the first manned Buran flights, and their Soyuz trips were necessary due to the Soviet mandate of having at least one crewmember on a mission with previous spaceflight experience.

  Soyuz TM-4 docked two days later, and the EO-3 crew performed an orderly handoff with the EO-2 crew over the next week. This was the first time that a scheduled handoff between two long-duration crews had taken place in orbit. The EO-2 crew and Levchenko undocked and returned to Earth in Soyuz TM-3 on 29 December. All told, Yuri Romanenko had spent 326 days in orbit and set a new record in the process. Combined with his time aboard Salyut 7, Romanenko had accumulated a total of almost 431 days in space. Aleksandrov walked to the waiting helicopter unaided while Romanenko was carried by the recovery crew. While Aleksandrov had only spent 160 days in orbit on this mission, when combined with his Salyut 7 time, he had spent over 300 days in space total.

  The Buran shuttle program would ultimately have only one unmanned test flight, which lifted off into dark and snowy skies on 15 November 1988 aboard a massive Energia booster. Buran carried out a two-orbit flight test and then conducted a fully automated reentry, approach, and landing with no major problems. There were plans to fly a manned mission in 1991 using a second Buran shuttle, with eventual flights to Mir, but the project was a big drain on the Soviet economy. Ultimately, no manned Buran missions would ever take place, even though the decision to cancel Buran would not come for many years yet.

  Sadly, Anatoli Levchenko would not live to even see Buran fly. Shortly after his return from orbit, Levchenko was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died less than a year later on 6 August 1988. Born in the Ukraine, he was only forty-seven years old and married with one child. None of the other cosmonaut test pilots selected for the Buran program would ever get to fly in orbit, leaving Igor Volk as the only surviving member of the group with any spaceflight experience.

  A Year in Space!

  Medical tests of Romanenko didn’t show anything unexpected, so the green light was given for Titov and Manarov to try to set a new record of spending a year in space aboard Mir. This mission was packed with many objectives; for the first six months, the crew conducted numerous scientific experiments in the Kvant 1 module and made use of new equipment delivered by several Progress ferries. For this mission, the crew asked for and was granted a request to have several music cassettes sent up to help pass the time. Cosmonauts have always considered missions of this type to be marathons. Care is typically exercised to not load down a crew with too many tasks too early. Still, the crew got plenty of work done in those early days and conducted a space walk in February to replace a panel on the dorsal solar array with a more efficient one.

  At the end of six months, all had gone well in orbit. Regular Progress supply flights had kept Mir’s consumables topped off. While there were only minor failures of equipment, including a particle detector on Kvant 1 that would require an EVA to fix it, Mir was performing fine. Even with these issues, the crew was in good spirits, so the go-ahead was given for a six-month extension to their tour of duty.

  The EO-3 crew would host visitors on 9 June 1988 as Soyuz TM-5 docked at the station’s rear port with the three-person EP-2 short-duration crew of Soyuz commander Anatoly Solovyov (no relation to Vladimir Solovyov), who was on his first spaceflight, and Salyut veteran Viktor Savinykh. Joining them was a Bulgarian Intercosmos cosmonaut, Aleksandr Panayotov Aleksandrov. While the Bulgarian shared almost exactly the same name with Soviet cosmonaut who had flown on the previous Mir expedition (even down to the same middle initial, P), the two men are not related. The Bulgarian Aleksandrov was the backup for fellow Bulgarian cosmonaut Georgi Ivanov, who launched into space aboard Soyuz 33 yet was unable to visit Salyut 6 due to a Soyuz engine malfunction.

  With this flight, Bulgaria concluded the Soviet Intercosmos program on a high note. The mission was a typical research cosmonaut flight with Aleksandrov performing numerous biomedical experiments and photographic studies of his home country. As with previous Intercosmos flights, the week of docked operations was packed with activity for the new crewmember. The visit of the three newcomers was welcomed by the original crew as it helped to have a change of pace, even if only for a short while. The EP-2 crew returned home on 17 June in Soyuz TM-4, leaving the Soyuz TM-5 to act as a fresh lifeboat.

  Titov and Manarov transferred their new Soyuz to the front docking port the next day and underwent preparations to replace the defective detector on Kvant 1’s X-ray telescope with a new unit. In a showcase of the warming of relations between the Soviet Union and Western Europe, the original detector and its replacement had been built by scientists from England and Belgium working for the ESA. The European specialists were on hand in the Kaliningrad control center during the 30 June space walk to act as advisors. The crew performed the EVA, although they ran into difficulties with some bolts that were very difficult to break loose with their gloved hands. The operation took longer than expected, and they ultimately had to be cut short when a special tool they were using broke, leaving the pair unable to fully extract the faulty detector. They would finish the task once a beefed-up tool was delivered on a Progress, but they still managed to get a lot of work done.

  A Progress flight delivered more supplies in late July, including a pair of brand new Orlan DM space suits. Unlike the suits designed earlier, which the cosmonauts had been using, these new units had a fully self-contained electrical system and communications gear, so they did not require a tethered umbilical from which to draw power. Instead, the new suits would use a smaller safety tether line. This line could be clipped on to handholds as needed during EVAs, allowing the cosmonauts to access new parts of Mir’s exterior.

  New Visitors and a House Call

  Soyuz TM-6 was the next spacecraft to visit Mir, docking with the complex on 31 August 1988. Veteran cosmonaut Vladimir Lyakhov was in command of the EP-3 mission. The flight engineer position was occupied by Valery Polyakov, a medical doctor. It was originally planned for Polyakov to fly to Mir during Romanenko’s long-duration visit and act as a medical specialist on hand to observe the spaceflight record attempt, but a last-minute crew change had Buran pilot Levchenko flying in his
place instead.

  The third crew couch was occupied by Abdul Mohmand, a research cosmonaut from Afghanistan. The Soviet military was in the beginning stages of a planned pullout from the long war in Afghanistan, with the first major troop withdrawal taking place in mid-1988. The Communist Party wanted to capitalize on a bit of positive propaganda by having a citizen from that country flying in space before Soviet forces completely withdrew by early 1989. Mohmand’s cosmonaut training only lasted six months. This period was much shorter than the two-year training periods normally given to Intercosmos candidates. But Mohmand was a Soviet-trained fighter pilot in the Afghan Air Force, and he could speak Russian fluently. These factors aided his cosmonaut training.

  The EP-3 mission had Mohmand doing standard photography and biomedical experiments in orbit, although these used existing equipment since there wasn’t time to fly experiments designed in Afghanistan. This mission would be a little different, as Polyakov would join the EO-3 crew for the final few months of its flight and then remain in orbit with the EO-4 crew. Lyakhov and Mohmand would return home on the Soyuz TM-5, swapping it for the new ferry.

  “Stuck in the Middle with You”

  Soyuz TM-5 undocked on 6 September. To help provide a better fuel cushion, Soyuz TM missions to that point had the orbital module being jettisoned before retrofire, so less fuel would be needed to slow down the spacecraft for a proper deorbit. The procedure for the descent called for TM-5 to fire the deorbit engine just after entering daylight for a morning landing in Kazakhstan. But just prior to the engine firing, orbital sunrise temporarily blinded the horizon sensors on the Soyuz craft. It took a few minutes to find out what the problem was, and by then the Soyuz was too far down range from the recovery site to execute a proper deorbit. Two orbits later, a second attempt was made, but the engine cut off after only six seconds of burn time. On an attempt to relight it, it again cut off after fifty seconds, well short of the nearly four minutes required for a proper deorbit. It was decided by Kaliningrad that the crew would remain in orbit for a whole day while engineers on the ground analyzed the problem. That was easier said than done.