The Salyut Series
On April 19, 1971, the Soviet space station called Salyut 1 was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in what is now Kazakhstan. Salyut means "salute" in English. The station was cylindrically shaped and approximately twelve meters long (about thirty-nine feet) and four meters (thirteen feet) wide at its widest point. It was placed into orbit approximately 200 kilometers (124.3 miles) above Earth.
The station was built so that Soviet scientists could study the long-term effects on humans of living in space. A crew of three cosmonauts flew aboard Soyuz 10 to the station a few days after the station was placed in orbit. They were unable to dock with it and returned to Earth. In June 1971 the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 11 successfully docked with the station, and three cosmonauts inhabited it for twenty-four days. They were killed as they returned to Earth, when a valve opened on their spacecraft and allowed it to depressurize. At that time, cosmonauts did not wear pressurized space suits during launch or reentry.
TABLE 5.2 The Salyut series of Soviet space stations
| TABLE 5.2 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Salyut series of Soviet space stations | ||||
| Name | Launch date | Deorbit date | Total crew occupancy time | Note |
| SOURCE: Created by Kim Weldon for Thomson Gale, 2004 | ||||
| Salyut 1 | April 1971 | October 1971 | 24 days | Three cosmonauts died on their return to Earth. |
| Salyut 2 | April 1973 | April 1973 | 0 days | Unmanned. Station fell apart soon after reaching orbit. |
| Salyut 3 | June 1974 | January 1975 | 15 days | Hosted 1 crew. One unsuccessful docking. |
| Salyut 4 | December 1974 | February 1977 | 92 days | Hosted 2 crews and 1 unmanned craft. One abort. |
| Salyut 5 | June 1976 | August 1977 | 67 days | Hosted 2 crews. One unsuccessful docking. |
| Salyut 6 | September 1977 | July 1982 | 676 days | Hosted 16 crews and 1 unmanned craft. |
| Salyut 7 | April 1982 | February 1991 | 861 days | Hosted 10 crews. |
The Soviet space agency cancelled future flights to the station and began an extensive redesign of the Soyuz spacecraft. In October 1971 Salyut 1 fell into Earth's atmosphere and was destroyed. In total the Soviets put seven Salyuts into orbit as shown in Table 5.2. These stations were visited by cosmonauts and scientists from a number of countries, including France, India, and Cuba. In 1984 three Soviet cosmonauts spent 237 days aboard Salyut 7. This was a new record for human duration in space. Salyut 7 was deorbited in February 1991.
Mir
In February 1986 the Soviet Union launched a new space station into orbit. It was called Mir. Although this word is often translated into English as "peace" or "world," it has a deeper meaning in Russian culture and history. It refers to a type of village established in the harsh and cold Russian countryside during the 1800s in which the villagers shared limited resources and worked together to survive.
Mir was to be Russia's first continuously occupied space station. Although originally planned to stay in orbit for five years, Mir survived for fifteen years. It finally tumbled to Earth in 2001.
Russian cosmonauts repeatedly set and broke space duration records aboard the Mir station. Vladimir Titov (1947–) and Musa Manarov (1951–) reached the one-year milestone when they completed 366 days in space in 1988. By 1995 the record was 438 days, set by Valeri Polyakov (1942–). This record still stands as of 2006.
The Mir is also famous for its non-governmental inhabitants. The Soviet space program suffered financial difficulties beginning in the 1980s. To raise funds, the space agency sold seats on Mir to a variety of foreign astronauts and adventurers. In 1990 a Japanese journalist named Tohiro Akiyama became the first citizen of Japan to fly in space and the first private citizen to pay for a space flight. Akiyama's television network paid $28 million to send the man on a seven-day mission to Mir. In 1991 a British chemist named Helen Sharman (1963–) spent eight days in space after winning a contest sponsored by a London bank.
Shuttle-Mir Missions
As early as 1978 NASA proposed a joint U.S.-Soviet mission to a Salyut station. NASA engineers discussed possible ways to dock a U.S. space shuttle with the station and hoped to put a scientific payload on board the station. Scientific hopes were overshadowed by international politics. In 1979 the Soviet Union began a war in Afghanistan. Two years later the Soviet government imposed martial law in Poland to suppress dissenters. The U.S. response to both incidents was a sharp reduction in cooperative efforts between the two countries. The Soviet empire began to dissolve during the late 1980s and was officially ended in 1991, when it separated into numerous independent countries. The largest of these was Russia, which inherited most of the Soviet space program.
In June 1992 U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a document called the "Agreement between the United States of America and the Russian Federation Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes." NASA and the Russian space agency Rosa-viakosmos (which had been recently created) worked out a plan for joint shuttle-Mir missions. Both agencies considered this a prelude to a joint U.S.-Russian space station. In fact, the shuttle-Mir program was officially called "Phase 1" at NASA. Phase 2 was to be assembly of a space station. Phase 3 was to be operation of a space station with gradual addition of scientific and operational capabilities.
The agency set four goals for the Phase 1 program:
- Learn to work with international partners
- Reduce the risks associated with developing and building a space station
- Gain American experience in long-duration missions
- Perform research in life sciences, microgravity, and environmental programs
In 1993 U.S. President Bill Clinton met with Yeltsin and agreed to continue cooperative efforts in space exploration. On February 3, 1994, the space shuttle Discovery (STS-60) launched for the first time ever with a cosmonaut aboard. Exactly a year later the shuttle was launched again. This time the shuttle flew near Mir. In June of 1995, STS-71, with the orbiter Atlantis, docked with Mir. The shuttle was carrying four cosmonauts in addition to its American crew.
Between 1994 and 1998 space shuttles docked ten times with Mir. Figure 5.1 depicts a shuttle docked to the Mir space station. American astronauts logged nearly 1,000 days of orbit time during the Phase 1 program. One of them, Shannon Lucid (1943–), set the women's record for space flight duration—188 days. A summary of all Phase 1 accomplishments is given in Table 5.3.
Mir Mishaps
When the first Americans arrived at Mir in 1995, the station had already been in orbit for nine years. They found a cramped and crowded spacecraft bulging with hoses, cables, and scientific equipment. Every closet and storage space was crammed full. Some gear and tools floated around, because there was no space left to stow or fasten them. Over the years, water droplets had escaped from environmental control systems and now clung to delicate electronics. Mir's systems were plagued by computer crashes and battery problems. The cosmonauts spent the vast majority of their time doing repair and maintenance tasks.
On February 23, 1997, a fire broke out aboard Mir when a cosmonaut lit a lithium perchlorate candle. Flames one-foot long shot out of the unit and ignited the canister. At the time, there were six men aboard the station—four Russians, a German, and an American. The fire quickly filled the spacecraft with smoke. The Russians ordered everyone to evacuate the station. However, the fire blocked access to one of the two Soyuz capsules that served as their lifeboats. Only three men would be able to escape if the hull was breached.
The men fought the flames with towels and a few working fire extinguishers. Many of the ship's fire extinguishers malfunctioned or were bolted down and could not be released. After fifteen minutes the fire died, apparently snuffed out by lack of oxygen in its immediate area. The crew had donned respirators and floated quietly, barely moving for hours and waiting for the ship's ventilation system to remove the smoke.
Russian mission control downplayed the fire to the public and American officials, telling them it was a minor and isolated event. In truth, there had been a similar occurrence several years before in which a candle had burst into flames. Neither the most recent crew nor the public had been informed of that incident. Secrecy had always been a hallmark of the Soviet space program, and this culture persisted in the Russian space program of the 1990s.
The fire in February 1997 was followed by even more problems aboard Mir. Only a week later, a camera failed during a docking exercise and the station was nearly rammed by a supply ship. In late March the cooling system failed. The temperature rose to 95° Fahrenheit on the station, and it was permeated by an odor of antifreeze. High carbon dioxide levels forced the crew to limit their physical activity.
FIGURE 5.1 Shuttle-Mir mated configuration
TABLE 5.3 Shuttle-Mir timeline, 1994–98
TABLE 5.3 Shuttle-Mir timeline, 1994–98 [CONTINUED]
Throughout the spring the crew struggled to repair the ailing ship. In June another calamity struck. On June 27, 1997, the crew was conducting a docking test using a Progress supply ship. The cosmonauts did not trust the station's television images of the maneuver and tried to guess the distance by eyesight. The freighter slammed into the station and cracked its hull. The incident is described in detail in a 2003 book titled Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, by Robert Zimmerman.
According to Zimmerman, the Mir crew felt their ears pop as the station began to lose pressure and they could hear oxygen hissing out into outer space. The crash had breached the hull of the module called Spektr. Mission control ordered the crew to close the hatch to that module and seal off the breach. This was impossible, because previous crews had run electrical cables and wires through the doorway. The hatch could not be closed all the way. The crew frantically began cutting and unhooking the wiring. Finally they closed the door, isolating themselves in the base unit away from the leak.
The impact with the freighter knocked the station into an uncontrollable spin. Disconnection from Spektr had cut power to vital systems. The crew floated in darkness for nearly thirty hours. Finally, they used the rockets on the Soyuz lifeboats to nudge the station out of its spin and into proper position.
The mishaps aboard Mir could not be downplayed anymore. Politicians and the press in the United States called for NASA to stop sending American astronauts to the trouble-prone station. Despite the pressure, NASA and the White House felt it was important to complete the Phase 1 program. Shuttle flights continued to Mir throughout 1997 and into 1998.
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