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

by Jay Chladek

  Vasili Lazarev and Oleg Makarov seemed to weather their encounter in relatively good spirits, although Lazarev had to lobby First Secretary Brezhnev directly to get the spaceflight bonus pay since it wasn’t going to be awarded due to the aborted flight. Makarov would fly in space again, but Lazarev apparently suffered a hidden injury to his back that wasn’t detected initially. He left the Soviet cosmonaut program in 1981 after failing a regular physical. Officially, the Soviets referred to the incident as the “April 5th anomaly.” They also designated the mission Soyuz 18A (or Soyuz 18-1 in some publications) and gave the original Soyuz 18 title to the next spacecraft.

  Second Crew

  It was only a little under two months later when the Soviets tried again to launch a second crew to Salyut 4. For this mission, the backup crew of Pyotr Klimuk, who had originally flown on Soyuz 13, and Vitaly Sevastyanov, a veteran of Soyuz 9, would fly the new Soyuz 18 into space. All went well as the booster sent Soyuz 18 into orbit on 24 May 1975. A perfect docking was achieved, and the crew entered the Salyut to begin their residency. It was a milestone in Soviet spaceflight; for the first time, a single Salyut station was successful in hosting two crews without any problems.

  The first order of business was maintenance, of both the repair and the preventative varieties. The philosophy that prevailed from the early days of the DOS-1 program was that equipment on the station should easily be accessible for on-orbit repairs. The crew performed maintenance such as changing out air filters and elements in the water condenser system and fixing one of the spectrometers with spare parts ferried up from the ground. All things considered, Salyut 4 was in great shape for a station that had spent nearly five months in orbit to that point.

  For this mission, the planners decided to alter the schedule of science gathering. So rather than spending some time on different experiments over the course of a week, the crew would dedicate their time to a single scientific discipline and experiment, gathering data for several days during a specific portion of the mission. For example, they would begin with astronomy, then move on to a different scientific discipline for a period of time, and so on. This was mainly done to help ration the propellant usage, so the station didn’t have to be oriented to conduct one type of experiment and then get oriented to another position right after. The rescheduling also helped with the science being conducted. By having an experiment ready to go on consecutive days, a cosmonaut could get right to work on the data collection without spending time on set up or disassembly.

  While the Soyuz 18 mission had its fair share of biological and astronomical science gathering, Earth studies made up one of the largest portions of the mission as the crew collected data on pollution levels in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Many photographs of the Soviet Union were taken to help with planning a route for a 3,500-kilometer railway that was intended to run from Lake Baikal in southern Siberia to the Amur River on the Manchurian border. Given the remote location, a survey from space was the best way to locate any hidden tectonic features, which bridge and tunnel designs would have to account for.

  Increased solar activity in mid-June had the Soyuz 18 crew pointing Salyut 4’s solar instruments toward the sun to study a solar eruption. On the station’s night passes, the cosmonauts also observed the solar eruption’s effects on Earth’s atmosphere in the form of increased aurora activity, which made for quite a light show. The solar instruments shot over six hundred images of the sun during the Soyuz 18 mission, thanks to Soyuz 17’s successful repair efforts of the primary telescope.

  At the end of June, the crew surpassed the Soyuz 17 crew’s thirty-day milestone. The go-ahead was given to press ahead with an ultimate goal of trying to double it, even though this mission extension would result in Salyut 4 being occupied for a little longer than its projected service life. Sevastyanov celebrated his fortieth birthday on 8 July, and Klimuk celebrated his thirty-third birthday two days later. The Soyuz ferry was used to conduct a reboost of the station’s orbit, whereas previous orbital maneuvers had only been conducted with the Salyut’s onboard engines.

  On 15 July the control centers of Kaliningrad and Yevpatoria were in control of two separate manned missions as Soyuz 19 lifted off from Baikonur. Soyuz 19 was the Soviet half of the joint American and Soviet Apollo-Soyuz Test Project docking mission. The day after Soyuz 19 entered orbit, its commander Alexei Leonov communicated to the Soyuz 18 crew that if anything broke down, he would be happy to fly over and fix it. This of course was an inside joke, as Leonov and Soyuz 19 crewmate Valery Kubasov had both trained for flights to three previous DOS stations and never had a chance to visit any of them in orbit. Kaliningrad was traditionally the control center used for civilian missions, but ground control of the Salyut 4 mission was transferred over to the second control center to allow Kaliningrad’s use for Soyuz 19. Once Soyuz 19 returned safely to Earth, control of Soyuz 18 and Salyut 4 was transferred back to Kaliningrad.

  During one week in July, the orbit of Salyut 4 meant that it was practically in sunlight almost all the time, and this led to concerns that systems aboard the Soyuz ferry craft might overheat due to the lack of a cooling period in Earth’s shadow. So the crew routed additional cooling hoses and ventilation into the Soyuz to help keep the internal systems nice and cool. As a by-product of this orbital period, a little more solar power was available for use with the station’s experiments since the storage batteries weren’t needed as often.

  Toward the end of the mission, Salyut 4’s systems were beginning to show their strain as humidity levels were higher than what they were at the beginning of the flight. Late in the mission, the crew were unable to see anything out of the station’s windows due to moisture condensation on them, and the walls were also sprouting bright-green mold growth.

  Vitaly Sevastyanov’s previous spaceflight was the long-duration Soyuz 9 mission, and he paid the price of a longer postflight recovery when the crew neglected the exercise regime. For this mission, both cosmonauts stuck to their strict exercise regime. They would soon get their chance to find out if the physical work helped them to recover more quickly when they returned home.

  On 26 July the Soyuz 18 crew closed up shop in the Salyut and made a successful return to Earth. There were no plans to send up another crew as the station’s onboard consumables had been used up. When the recovery forces arrived at Soyuz 18’s landing site, the doctors attached to the recovery team wanted to have the cosmonauts carried to the waiting helicopter, but the crew ignored the advice and decided to climb out of the capsule and on board the recovery helicopter under their own power. However, they still spent a few days recovering from their ordeal. While the new exercise regime helped, it wasn’t a cure-all for everything. The pair’s prolonged period in space also led to some curious behaviors, as Klimuk reported that he awoke during one of their first nights back and observed Sevastyanov sleeping in bed with his arms outstretched above him, as though he were still weightless.

  After this mission, Pyotr Klimuk would fly in space again. But for forty-year-old Valery Sevastyanov, this was the last spaceflight, as the engineer and scientist-cosmonaut was pulled from active flight status in 1976 to serve as a ground controller in support of later Salyut missions. Sevastyanov had been involved in Soyuz spacecraft design prior to his selection as a cosmonaut; he returned to that job in the early 1980s, as he was involved in designing the Soviet space shuttle (eventually known as the Buran).

  Outside his involvement with the Soviet space program, Sevastyanov was also the host of a Soviet television program about space exploration in the early 1980s and served as president of the Soviet Union Chess Federation. One of his lasting legacies, though, was in partnership with cosmonauts Leonov and Grechko and astronaut Rusty Schweickart; they formed the Association for Space Explorers in 1984. Membership is open to all people who have flown in space, regardless of nationality. Vitaly Sevastyanov unfortunately passed away on 5 April 2010 after a prolonged illness.

  Making Progress

  While Soyu
z 18 was the last manned mission to Salyut 4, the station would host one more spacecraft. One additional feature that made Salyut 4 different from its predecessors was that its Igla system made it capable of allowing an unmanned spacecraft with a compatible system to dock with the station. On 17 November 1975 an unmanned Soyuz spacecraft lifted off from Baikonur. Rather than giving the spacecraft a Cosmos designation, the Soviets instead called the spacecraft Soyuz 20; over the next two days, it performed a series of maneuvers to rendezvous and dock with Salyut 4. The spacecraft took about thirty-four orbits after launch to rendezvous and dock with the station, while previous manned flights had done it in seventeen orbits. This revised rendezvous procedure would eventually become the established norm for future missions to Soviet space stations. Once docked with Salyut 4, Soyuz 20 was powered down, and it would not return to Earth until 20 February 1976.

  Soyuz 20 was a test mission for future Soyuz craft. Analysis of the descent module’s systems and telemetry from the flight led to the designers imposing a mission life limit of ninety days on the Soyuz craft in a stored state. The ninety-day maximum would potentially allow for future manned missions of longer duration than what had previously flown from either the Soviet Union or the United States.

  The testing of the automatic approach and docking would also benefit a new unmanned cargo ferry called Progress. The Progress spacecraft outwardly resembled a Soyuz and also launched on an R-7 carrier rocket (without the launch escape tower found on the manned Soyuz booster). But the new spacecraft was quite a bit different internally. The orbital module section was pressurized and could be outfitted with dry cargo for the crew of a space station. The Progress featured a single module that combined a modified Soyuz propulsion module at the rear with an unpressurized fuel-storage section in the spot normally occupied by a descent module on a Soyuz. The larger fuel supply of the Progress could be used to periodically reboost the station’s orbit using the craft’s engines, but fuel could also be transferred from the Progress to the onboard fuel tanks of future Salyut stations, thanks to a modified docking collar.

  Not only could a Progress fly supplies to a Salyut station, but it would also allow for crews to throw things away. A lot of trash can be generated, and disposal becomes quite a problem as storage space runs out. Trash can’t be thrown over the side, either, as it could become a debris hazard. Only pieces that are big enough to be tracked from the ground can be released, provided that their orbits decay quickly. At the end of its mission, the Progress would be carefully loaded with trash. Once full, the Progress spacecraft would undock and execute a deorbit maneuver in order to burn up harmlessly. It would be another two years before a Progress was ready to fly, but when it did, the new supply craft added versatility to the Salyut program.

  Salyut 4 itself remained in orbit for over two years before it was finally commanded to reenter and burn up on 2 February 1977. While it was only occupied for ninety-two days, it taught the Soviet engineers a lot about long-term spaceflight. Much of what they had learned would be put into practice on the next generation of DOS stations.

  Salyut 5, the Last Almaz

  In the meantime, Chelomei’s bureau was ready to have another go with the Almaz. The Almaz OPS-3 station was launched into orbit on 22 June 1976. Launch and orbital deployment took place without problems. Once it reached orbit, it became known as Salyut 5, but the radio frequencies it used immediately revealed its military role to Western agencies.

  The first crew scheduled to fly to Salyut 5, on Soyuz 21, was made up of veteran Boris Volynov, the survivor of the harrowing Soyuz 5 reentry, and rookie cosmonaut Vitaliy Zholobov. Zholobov joined the space program as a cosmonaut engineer in 1963 as part of a group of cosmonauts selected from the Soviet Air Force ranks. The pair lifted off on 6 July 1976 and docked with the station a day later.

  As with Salyut 3, there was no live media coverage of Salyut 5’s mission, but the Soviet press did say that the station was going to conduct an extensive series of scientific experiments and observations, with a large portion of those dedicated to photography of regions deep in the heart of Russia and Siberia to look for natural resources. In preparation for this assignment, both cosmonauts reportedly attended classes on geology. Materials-processing experiments were reportedly also carried, including a furnace for smelting metals and studying their behaviors in zero gravity. Salyut 5 also apparently carried the first sealed water aquarium into orbit to study the embryonic development of primitive species of fish. Fluid dynamics were also studied, and the data was considered important for developing the fuel-transfer system on the Progress.

  Western observers considered the scientific experiments carried on Salyut 5 as little more than set dressing. Most everyone figured out that the primary mission was intelligence gathering. But even with a manned station, not every orbital pass is ideal for photography of intelligence targets of opportunity. Each ninety-minute orbit of Earth shifts farther west while the planet rotates under the station. So after a few days of flight with daylight over possible reconnaissance targets in the United States, eventually it would give way to U.S. darkness, with daylight over the Soviet Union providing ample opportunity for scientific-data gathering.

  To this day, the reconnaissance data gathered by Salyut 5 is still considered classified in Russia, and even the crew doesn’t talk about their experiences publicly. Boris Volynov, who was willing to talk about his Soyuz 5 reentry experience when knowledge of it became public, would simply answer nyet (“no” in Russian) and fold his arms when asked questions about Salyut 5.

  Early Return

  All indications were that the crew would remain aboard Salyut 5 for a sixty-day period and that things seemed to go rather well in the beginning. What happened next isn’t entirely clear, though. According to the “Astrospies” television program, sometime during the station’s forty-second day in orbit, the electrical system on board failed during a nighttime pass, plunging the crew into complete darkness. The crew were able to restore power and resumed normal operations, but not long after that, Zholobov apparently began to experience audio hallucinations. He would hear things that weren’t there, and nothing could be done to help his condition.

  Six days later, the mission ended abruptly as Soyuz 21 undocked and returned to Earth on 24 August at night with a normal, albeit slightly bumpy, return to Kazakhstan. Considering that previous Soyuz returns had taken place in the daytime whenever possible, this raised a few eyebrows in the West. The crew initially was reported to be in not so good health when the recovery forces got to them. Part of the reason was that their abrupt return came before they were scheduled to increase their on-orbit exercise regime in preparation to return home. But after two weeks of recovery time, both cosmonauts seemed to make a complete recovery.

  The reasons for the early return are not clear, as references to Soyuz 21’s problems are somewhat contradictory, with the “Astrospies” program being the first one to mention an on-orbit power loss. Prior to the announcement of the mission’s end, it had been reported on state television that Zholobov was suffering from sensory deprivation. There are indications that Volynov was also starting to show signs of stress as well. After the mission, it had been said that both crewmembers may have been suffering side effects of nitric acid vapors from the station’s reaction control system entering the cabin, as both cosmonauts apparently reported to program managers that they could smell an acrid odor days after the power loss. Indications were that the station continued to operate normally while unmanned, and preparations were made to fly another crew to it.

  It would be a while before the next crew attempted to fly to Salyut 5, while engineers and doctors on the ground tried to determine what had happened. Since the crew left the station so abruptly, they apparently did not have time to load their exposed film aboard the cargo return capsule. So another crew would need to go up to at least finish that particular task. To help with any possible toxic fumes, the crew would carry gas masks.

  The Turbulent Fli
ght of Soyuz 23

  With Soyuz 22 scheduled to fly a stand-alone mission, Soyuz 23 would be the next mission scheduled to fly to Salyut 5. A pair of rookie cosmonauts were selected to fly this assignment. The commander of the mission was Vyacheslav Zudov, a Soviet Air Force cosmonaut selected specifically for the Almaz program in 1965. Joining him was Valery Rozhdestvensky, a member of the Soviet Navy. During the early days of Almaz, the plan was to select military specialists. As such, a naval cosmonaut might have an easier time identifying specific Western naval ships and other subjects of interest in ports as opposed to an air force specialist. Rozhdestvensky’s naval experience likely came in handy for this mission, but in a manner not even he could have predicted.

  Soyuz 23 lifted off for orbit on 14 October 1976. It was scheduled to be a relatively short mission of only about two weeks, probably because neither the crew nor the engineers on the ground would know exactly what the living conditions aboard Salyut 5 were like until they had docked. If nitric acid fumes had contaminated the station’s atmosphere, then they could also have contaminated both the station’s food and its water supply.