Category Praxis Manned Spaceflight Log 1961-2006

As the early spacecraft were developed from military missiles, they had a very nasty tendency to explode on or shortly after lift-off. Getting these vehicles safe enough to carry a crew – man-rating – was a priority, but to be on the safe side, additional escape methods were developed. All systems are tested many times to ensure their correct operation in the event of an emergency and though no crew would wish to experience launch escape systems in action, it is comforting knowing that there is an option to get out of a bad situation if necessary, assuming you have time to do anything about it, of course.

The Soviet Vostok one-man craft employed an ejector seat, which would be used in the event of a launch failure or operationally for pre-landing ejection and parachute descent. In contrast, the Voskhod was the most dangerous of all spacecraft. Adapted from the basic Vostok one-man vehicle, it could carry two cosmonauts with spacesuits, or three without, but it didn’t have any room for ejection seats.

The US Mercury and Apollo spacecraft, and the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, utilised a rocket launch escape system during the final stages of the countdown and in the early stages of ascent. The Chinese Shenzhou has a similar rocket escape system to the Russian Soyuz. The Russians have experienced two launch aborts during the forty years of Soyuz operations. During the abort in 1975, the escape tower had been ejected and the crew had to rely on the ballistic abort and return separation sequence, enduring up to 20-G loads for a few seconds. Then in 1983, a Soyuz launch pad abort system was activated when a launch vehicle caught fire on the pad. It exploded seconds after the crew were boosted to safety by the escape tower.

The American Gemini spacecraft adopted ejector seats, which could be used prior to launch or during ascent if required. The first four Shuttle orbital test missions also had ejection seats fitted, but these were deactivated after the fourth and final test mission and removed after the fifth flight.

The Space Shuttle also has a series of abort modes available during the ascent phase, although, when asked whether they wanted to fly a test mission of these aborts, the astronauts declined, indicating that they would test them when they needed them.

In the event of a main engine failure prior to ignition of the twin Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs), there are options to abort the launch and this has occurred on five occasions in the history of the Shuttle programme. The three official abort modes are Return to Launch Site (RTLS), Trans-Atlantic Abort (TAL) and Abort to Orbit (ATO).

RTLS occurs early in the flight if one or more engines are lost. This is the most risky, and many astronauts don’t believe it is survivable, as the stack has to turn around and fly back to the Kennedy Space Center. This would be a severe strain on the structural integrity of the vehicle. A TAL abort is a preferred option, with three prime locations in Europe, while an ATO is the only one to have actually occurred thus far. This was in 1985 during mission STS 51-F, when one engine shut down early during launch. The mission continued normally. It is obvious to all who fly the Shuttle, however, that a failure of an SRB (which occurred on the STS 51-L launch in January 1986) is non-survivable. There are other “contingency” aborts which are not “official” but are nonetheless trained for. The orbiter could shed its External Tank (ET) and conceivably land at Bermuda or other east coast sites in the USA, but this, too, would provide a real challenge for the flight crew – and quite a spectacle for the locals.

As the Shuttle launch pads were adapted from the older Apollo Saturn V launch pad, some of the facilities are still available to the crew on the pad in the event of an emergency situation. Should an emergency occur before launch, such as fire after a launch pad abort, the crew would evacuate the Shuttle and use “baskets” on slide wires to descend to the ground, then go through tunnels into an underground bunker. There is also the option of using an armoured personnel carrier to vacate the pad as quickly as possible. Any countdown demonstration test during training on the pad ends with this emergency drill, although it does not include the actual slide wire ride. During the Apollo era, and due to the height of the tower, the crew could have used a slide tube system leading to an underground protected bunker, if they had time to get there!

For resident crews on the International Space Station (ISS), and previously on the Soviet Salyut and Mir stations, an emergency return vehicle has always been

available – the Soyuz. There is always one attached to the station and when crews become larger as more of the station is built, there will be two attached. NASA has been planning and designing its own Crew Rescue Vehicle but it is unlikely that this will ever be built. The Soyuz is perfectly adequate for the job. It is probable, however, that if NASA build a Crew Exploration Vehicle for the Vision for Space Exploration pro­gramme, one or two of these will be docked to the ISS.

The launch aircraft for the Spaceship One vehicle was a manned twin-turbojet research aircraft designed for high-altitude flights. It carried Spaceship One to an altitude of about 50,000 ft (15.24 km) although its ceiling was 53,000 ft (16.15 km) with a payload capacity of 8,000 lbs (3,628 kg). With a crew capacity of three, it could increase its 82ft (25 m) wing to 93 ft (28.3 m) for increased climb capability.

Spaceship One featured a three-seat (although for the X-Prize flights, two were ballasted) 60 inch (152 cm) diameter shirt sleeve environment cabin, with space-qualified ECS and dual-pane windows. The unique bullet-shape-with-wings configuration gave aircraft-like qualities for the boost phase, glide and landing. Its “care-free” configuration allowed a hands-off re-entry and reduced aerodynamic and thermal loads by converting to a pneumatic-actuated “feather” configuration, offering a stable, high-drag shape for entry. The motor powering the system was a “new non­toxic liquid nitrous oxide/rubber-fuelled hybrid propulsion system” specifically developed for Spaceship One.

1962 tau 1 24 May 1962

Pad 14, Cape Canaveral, Florida 24 May 1962

Northeast of Puerto Rico, Atlantic Ocean Atlas 107D; spacecraft serial number SC-18 4hrs 56 min 5 sec Aurora 7

Three-orbit mission

Flight Crew

CARPENTER, Malcolm Scott, 37, USN, pilot

Flight Log

Mercury Atlas 7, which was originally to have been the first manned orbital flight, was assigned to astronaut Deke Slayton (who would have used the call sign Delta 7), with Wally Schirra as his back-up. On 16 March 1962, it was announced that Slayton would be dropped from flight status because of a “heart flutter”, but his replacement was not Schirra but Glenn’s back-up, Scott Carpenter. This was mainly because Carpenter had more simulator training experience and MA7 was to be a three-orbit affair, like Glenn’s.

The mission – the first to be flown by a replacement astronaut – was also to be the first science flight, with experiments to study visibility from space, the behaviour of liquid in weightlessness, to take hand-held photos of weather patterns and the airglow phenomena, and to deploy a five-colour, 74 cm (29 in) diameter balloon extending on a tether about 30 m (98 ft) from the capsule, which Carpenter named Aurora 7 after his hometown street. In retrospect, the astronaut was given too much to do on the flight and as a result, fell behind the schedule, became a bit flustered and was impatient and careless. He was rather unfairly blamed by some fellow astronauts.

The flight began at 07: 45 hours at Cape Canaveral after being delayed three times, each for only 15 minutes, because ground fog would make launch monitoring and photography difficult. Carpenter reached 32.5° orbit, with an apogee of 267 km (166 miles) and a maximum speed of 28,242 kph (17,550 mph) and got to work. His spacesuit overheated, he had to make several manual orientation manoeuvres to correct the automatic control system, and before retro-fire he had not even read his pre-retro-fire checklist. While struggling to do three things at once, he inadvertently hit the roof of Aurora 7, discovering the source of Glenn’s “fireflies” as ice particles on the outside. He switched to manual control in preparation for the orientation manoeuvre and forgot to switch off the automatic system, wasting precious fuel.

The spacecraft was at the wrong yaw and pitch angle at retro-fire, which came three seconds late. Carpenter lost his orientation propellant during the re-entry. He gave a continuous, somewhat excitable commentary into a tape recorder during the re-entry and landed 400 km (249 miles) off target, northeast of Puerto Rico at T + 4 hours 56 minutes 5 seconds. He was spotted in a life raft 38 minutes after splashdown, but another two and a half hours elapsed before a helicopter from the USS Pierce picked him up, giving rise to public worries that he had been lost.

Milestones

6th manned space flight 4th US manned space flight 4th Mercury manned flight 1st flight by a replacement crew

On 17 July 1962, the first X-15 astro-flight to 95.9km (pilot Robert White, 38, USAF) was achieved using the number 3 aircraft.

1979-018A 25 February 1979

Pad 31, Site 6, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan 19 August 1979 (aboard Soyuz 34)

211 km southeast of Dzhezkazgan R7 (11A511U); spacecraft serial number (7K-T) #48 175 days 0hrs 37min 37 sec Proton (Proton)

Third Salyut 6 resident crew programme

Flight Crew

LYAKHOV, Vladimir Afanasevich, 37, Soviet Air Force, commander RYUMIN, Valery Viktorovich, 39, civilian, flight engineer, 2nd mission Previous mission: Soyuz 25 (1977)

Flight Log

The original plan for Salyut 6 was to include three long-duration missions, by Soyuz 25, 26 and 28, with visits by Soyuz 27, 29 and 30. The Soyuz 25 failure resulted in a reschedule and at first an anticipated reduction from three to two long-duration missions. By February 1979, however, Salyut’s condition was assessed to be worth a try at the third long-duration mission, by Soyuz 32, during which two further international missions would also be attempted. Soyuz 32, crewed by veteran Valery Ryumin and rookie commander Vladimir Lyakhov, took off in extremely overcast and murky skies at 16: 54 hrs local time. Their record residency aboard Salyut 6, which they entered the following day, was destined to be a long, lonely one.

The crew immediately checked over the station and found it in good condition, apart from the confirmation that there was a potentially serious problem with the station’s fuel system. A membrane in a liquid fuel and gaseous nitrogen gas line had warped. Orders were given to launch Progress 5 to start the restocking process. This arrived on 12 March, carrying, among other things, a TV monitor to permit the first two-way visual communications with the ground and an improved Kristall furnace. Before Progress 5 started refuelling, the tank connected to the line which had warped was ingeniously emptied by spinning the space station. This fuel was then transferred into another tank.

Each day, the crew embarked on a strenuous two-and-a-half-hour period of exercise to ward off the ill-effects of weightlessness which would be felt on landing back in 1-G. They took the first Soviet shower in space and by the end of March had completed nearly 40 repairs on the station, as well as their scientific work. All was ready for the arrival of Soyuz 33 with a Bulgarian visitor on 11 April. When this

mission failed to dock and had to make an emergency return to Earth, the following Hungarian mission, too, was cancelled, and the resident crew, which reached a maximum altitude of 406 km (252 miles) in the 51.6° orbit, resigned themselves to unmanned visits by further Progress tankers. The sixth of these arrived on 13 May.

An unusual step was then taken to ensure that Lyakhov and Ryumin had a fresh ferry vehicle. Soyuz 32 was replaced by Soyuz 34 (1979-049A), which was launched unmanned on 6 June. This docked at the rear and after Soyuz 32 returned unmanned, the crew took Soyuz 34 from the back to the front, in preparation for the arrival of Progress 7. Launched on 28 June, this new tanker delivered a radio telescope called the KRT-10, designed to monitor pulsars and other celestial phenomena. It was pushed through the aft docking port before Progress departed, and as the tanker undocked was automatically unfurled to a diameter of 10 m (33 ft), a record for a space dish antenna.

It may have jammed against some of the station’s appendages and not have unfurled correctly however, because after work with the KRT-10, the mission was thrown into a frenzy when the cosmonauts could not discard it in order to clear the aft docking port for another possible Progress launch to replenish the station later. Thanks to the intensive repair work by the cosmonauts, the station was being considered for several more missions, rather than being de-orbited. Therefore, Ryumin, assisted by Lyakhov, made an unscheduled and highly risky spacewalk on 15 August, reminiscent of the Skylab 2 EVA in 1973, to free the KRT using wire cutters. Their 1 hour 23 minute effort was successful.

The crew became the first to land in a spacecraft, Soyuz 34, that had been launched unmanned, at T + 175 days 0 hours 37 minutes 37 seconds, 211km (131 miles) south east of Dzhezkazgan. They had to be carried from the capsule and placed in reclining chairs. Although recovered fit and well after four days, Lyakhov and Ryumin at first had difficulty speaking properly and felt the effects of re-adaptation quite starkly; blankets felt like chainmail and beds like boards, they said.

Milestones

70th manned space flight

39th Soviet manned space flight

31st Soyuz manned space flight (Soyuz 32 up only)

33rd Soyuz manned space flight (Soyuz 34 down only)

New duration record – 175 days 0 hours

1st manned space flight to land in spacecraft launched unmanned 5th Soviet and 20th flight with EVA operations Lyakhov celebrates 39th birthday in space (28 Jul)

Ryumin celebrates 40th birthday in space (16 Aug)

Flight Crew

RUKAVISHNIKOV, Nikolay Nikolayevich, 46, civilian, commander, 3rd mission

Previous missions: Soyuz 10 (1971); Soyuz 16 (1974)

IVANOV, Georgy Ivan, 38, Bulgarian Air Force, cosmonaut researcher

Flight Log

Conditions at the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 22: 34 hrs local time on 10 April were described as the worst ever for a Soviet launch, as the SL-4 booster was committed to lift-off in winds of 40 kph (25 mph). Another international mission was under way, this time with the moustached Bulgarian Georgy Ivanov alongside the first Soviet civilian commander, Nikolay Rukavishnikov, who also happened to be the first non-pilot to command a spacecraft.

Soyuz 33 began its orbital manoeuvres for the rendezvous with Salyut 6, reaching a maximum altitude of 261 km (162 miles) at 51.6°, but Rukavishnikov was not happy with the main propulsion system. Instinctively, he knew that something was not quite right and this was confirmed on the control panel, with readings indicating lower chamber pressures than normal. One of the final manoeuvres for the rendezvous was a 6-second burst of the main engine, which fired erratically for 3 seconds and then shut down. The docking was off. The fault was later traced to the gas generator feeding the turbo-pump in the spacecraft’s main engine.

While the failure and routine return to Earth of the powerless Soyuz ferry were reported matter-of-factly by the Soviet news agencies, controllers and cosmonauts were very worried about the Soyuz 33 crew’s safety. The back-up propulsion unit would have to be used for the retro-burn and had never been used before on a manned mission. In addition, it was only capable of one continuous burn, rather than a two – phase retro-burn normally used to induce a stress-reduced, 3-G lifting re-entry. The ballistic re-entry would therefore involve much higher g-forces. The nominal back-up engine burn time was 188 seconds, but there was no guarantee that it would perform as

advertised. There was a facility to allow the crew to start it manually if it cut off after burning for at least 90 seconds, but even so, the re-entry would be extremely inaccurate.

Anything shorter would have meant them being stranded in orbit. A longer burn than nominal could place an intolerable G-force on the spacecraft and crew. Ivanov was told to make sure he tucked his moustache inside his helmet! Soyuz 33’s back-up engine fired for 213 seconds which was longer than normal and Rukavishnikov had to manually shut it down. For 530 seconds, the crew was subjected to G-forces between 10-G and a peak of 15-G. Rukavishnikov later commented that as the Soyuz DM descended it was like being inside the flames of a blowtorch. Externally, temperatures reached 3,000°C and the crew experienced a lot of vibration and noise. Pinned to their seats by the G forces, both reported difficulty in breathing but were still able to talk to each other. The capsule was glowing red as it landed beneath darkening skies 318 km (198 miles) southeast of Dzhezkazgan at T + 1 day 23 hours 1 minute 6 seconds.

Unlike NASA, there are no copies of the post-flight reports of the Soviet accident investigation boards publicly available. Accounts of what happened are left to per­sonal recollections, sometimes years after the event, making for conflicting accounts of the facts. The official RKK Energiya history and the memoirs of Flight Director Alexei Yeliseyev record that the engine failed to provide enough thrust and the deceleration impulse was less than planned. Soviet space analyst and historian Bart Hendrickx has suggested that perhaps the automatic systems on the Soyuz tried to compensate for the inadequate firing of the engine by commanding a longer burn than planned and the crew, unaware of this, simply shut it down. Landing close to the planned recovery site was pure coincidence according to Yeliseyev. Due to the insuf­ficient deceleration, Soyuz 33 took longer to enter the atmosphere, but as a result of the longer engine burn, a steeper angle compensated for the increase descent time.

Milestones

71st manned space flight

40th Soviet manned space flight

32nd Soyuz manned space flight

1st manned space flight commanded by non-pilot

1st civilian engineer-cosmonaut to command a Soviet mission

1st manned space flight by a Bulgarian

4th Interkosmos mission

Flight Crew

POPOV, Leonid Ivanovich, 34, Soviet Air Force, commander RYUMIN, Valery Viktorovich, 40, civilian, flight engineer, 3rd mission Previous missions: Soyuz 25 (1977); Soyuz 32 (1979)

Flight Log

Assigned to this next long-duration mission to Salyut 6 were commander Leonid Popov and flight engineer Valentin Lebedev, who injured his knee shortly before lift­off while exercising on a trampoline. Mission officials decided to adhere to the new rule that at least one flight experienced crewman should fly a mission and chose a certain Valery Ryumin as Lebedev’s replacement. So, eight months after coming home from the Soyuz 32 marathon, the tall, burly Ryumin was off again. Soyuz 35 lifted off into a decidedly murky sky at 19: 38 hrs local time on 9 April. Within 26 hours, Soyuz 35 was safely nestled at Salyut 6 and Ryumin entered the station to read a welcoming letter written by himself before he last left. Before Soyuz 35 had arrived, Salyut 6 had received two visits from unmanned spacecraft; the new Soyuz T1 ferry vehicle on an automatic test and a regular tanker visit from Progress 8, which was used to boost Salyut’s orbit and was there ready for unloading when the cosmonauts arrived. The rookie Popov went about his work in such a frenzy of enthusiasm that the experienced Ryumin told him to slow down – they were going to be there for a while.

After unloading Progress 8, the cosmonauts discarded it and almost immediately received Progress 9 in order to take on more equipment, including a new motor for a biogravity centrifuge. Progress 9 was also used for the first time to unload water into Salyut 6. Ryumin keenly tended his Oasis space garden and proudly displayed one of its products, a huge cucumber, which he later revealed was a plastic one.

The cosmonauts played host to several visiting crews and also unloaded two more Progress tankers. Soyuz 36 arrived with a Hungarian cosmonaut researcher in May, two Soviet cosmonauts arrived in Soyuz T2 in June, Progress 10 arrived the same month, and Soyuz 37 in July, with a crew including a cosmonaut researcher from

Vietnam. A Cuban followed in Soyuz 38 during September, and finally that month Progress 11 arrived and stayed docked for a record 70 days, well after Popov and Ryumin had returned to Earth. These regular visits meant that the resident crew estimated that they spent 25 per cent of their time in Salyut unloading equipment and cosmonauts. One major exercise during a hiatus in the visits during August was a dedicated period of Earth resources photography of targets in the Soviet Union, using the MKF-6M and KT-140 cameras. The approximately 4,500 images covered a total of 96 million km2 (37,056,000 miles2).

During the mission Ryumin put on 3.1 kg (7 lb), which was an unusual statistic for a space traveller. He and Popov had reached 365 km (227 miles) maximum altitude during the 51.6° orbit. They boarded the fresh Soyuz 37 and came home 180 km (112 miles) southeast of Dzhezkazgan at T + 184 days 20 hours 11 minutes 35 seconds, remarkably fresh and fit after a new record duration mission, which was not officially recognised as such by the IAF since it only exceeded the previous mission by nine days, not the required ten per cent. Nonetheless, Ryumin, with three flights under his belt, had clocked up almost a year’s space experience, and declared that he was ready to fly to Mars.

Milestones

72nd manned space flight 41st Soviet manned space flight 34th manned Soyuz space flight

Ryumin celebrates his 41st birthday in space (16 August)

1st person to celebrate two consecutive birthdays in space (Ryumin) Popov celebrates his 35th birthday in space (31 August)

1980-041A 26 May 1980

Pad 31, Site 6, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan 3 June 1980 (in Soyuz 35)

140 km southeast of Dzhezkazgan R7 (11A511U); spacecraft serial number (7K-T) #52 7 days 20 hrs 45 min 44 sec Orion (Orion)

Hungarian Interkosmos visiting mission programme; Soyuz ferry exchange mission

Flight Crew

KUBASOV, Valery Nikolayevich, 45, civilian, commander, 3rd mission Previous missions: Soyuz 6 (1969); Soyuz 19 ASTP (1975)

FARKAS, Bertalan, 30, Hungarian Air Force, cosmonaut researcher

Flight Log

Regarded with much hullabaloo in Hungary but not elsewhere, Soyuz 36, delayed from June 1979, lifted off from Baikonur at 00: 21 hrs local time on 27 May, carrying cosmonaut researcher Bertalan Farkas and his Soviet commander Valery Kubasov. Farkas arrived inside Salyut 6 bearing succulent gifts of goulash, pate de foie gras, fried pork and jellied tongue, and soon got down to work with his national experi­ments called Daignost, Balaton, Interferon, Dose, Opros, Andio, Oxymeter, Bio­sphere, Refraction, Zarya, Bealuca, Eotvos and Ilkeminator.

Farkas, who adapted to weightlessness much faster than his flight experienced colleague Kubasov, helped to process gallium arsenide crystals with chromium, assessed the misalignment of instruments due to long exposure to the space environ­ment, made a photographic geomorphological map of the Carpathian Basin, studied hearing and human motor response in weightlessness and attempted to study the behaviour of the cancer fighting drug Interferon in weightlessness. The Interferon experiment was divided into three separate studies: to assess the effect of weightless­ness in Interferon production in the lymphatic system on the human body, study changes in Interferon samples in weightlessness, and assess the effect of Interferon on blood samples taken before launch and after landing.

The mission, which reached 355 km (221 miles) in the 51.6° orbit, ended with a night landing at T + 7 days 20 hours 45 minutes 44 seconds in Soyuz 35, 140 km (87 miles) southeast of Dzhezkazgan. The fresher Soyuz 36 was left for the resident crew in case of the need for an emergency return.

Milestones

73rd manned space flight

42nd Soviet manned space flight

35th Soyuz manned space flight

1st manned space flight by a Hungarian

5th Interkosmos mission

1980-045A 5 June 1980

Pad 1, Site 5, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan 9 June 1980

198 km from Dzhezkazgan

R7 (11A511U); spacecraft serial number: (7K-ST) #07L 3 days 22hrs 19 min 30 sec Yupiter (Jupiter)

Manned test flight of new Soyuz T ferry

Flight Crew

MALYSHEV, Yuri Vasilyevich, 38, Soviet Air Force, commander AKSENOV, Vladimir Viktorovich, 45, civilian, flight engineer, 2nd mission Previous mission: Soyuz 22 (1976)

Flight Log

After the unmanned Soyuz T1 test flight in 1979, the cautious Soviets decided to test the new vehicle again on a short mission with a crew aboard. Wearing new style space – suits, Yuri Malyshev and Vladimir Aksenov lifted off from Baikonur at 20: 19hrs local time, heading for a totally automatic rendezvous and docking with Salyut 6. The hands-off docking became a hands-on one from 210 m (689 ft) because the avionics aboard the new ship failed. Malyshev and Aksenov, who reached a maximum altitude of 349 km (217 miles) at 51.6°, spent a brief time with Salyut 6 hosts Ryumin and Popov before heading home, departing the station 2 days 17 hours 22 minutes after docking.

En route, they jettisoned the Orbital Module before rather than after retro-fire to save fuel and, according to some western analysts, possibly to demonstrate that an Orbital Module could be left attached to Salyut to act as a special laboratory. Soyuz T2 came home at T + 3 days 22 hours 19 minutes 30 seconds, 198 km (123 miles) from Dzhezkazgan, with black soot covering its windows after the fiery re-entry and with the aid of larger deceleration rockets to aid touchdown.

Milestones

74th manned space flight 43rd Soviet manned space flight 36th Soyuz manned space flight 1st Soyuz T manned space flight

1980-064A 23 July 1980

Pad 1, Site 5, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan 31 July 1980 (in Soyuz 36)

179 km southeast of Dzhezkazgan R7 (11A511U); spacecraft serial number (7K-T) #53 7 days 20 hrs 42 min Terek (Terek)

Vietnamese Interkosmos visiting mission programme; Soyuz ferry exchange mission

Flight Crew

GORBATKO, Viktor Vasilyevich, 45, Soviet Air Force, commander, 3rd mission

Previous missions: Soyuz 7 (1969); Soyuz 24 (1977)

TUAN, Pham, 33, Vietnamese Air Force, cosmonaut researcher

Flight Log

The Interkosmos international manned missions to Salyut 6 were accompanied by much propaganda, most of which rubbed up many western observers the wrong way. This was particularly true for the flight of Soyuz 37 with cosmonaut researcher Pham Tuan, hailed as the only pilot to have shot down an American B-52 during the Vietnam War, a claim refuted by the USA. One of his tasks during the flight, according to the Soviets, was to study the effects on the Vietnamese countryside, plants and forests of the enormous amounts of defoliants and fire bombs dropped during the conflict.

Western sports journalists reporting from the Moscow Olympics – much boy­cotted as a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan – were told to applaud when told of the launch, which was the usual spectacular event, since it again took place at night, 00: 33hrs local time at Baikonur. Twenty-six hours later, Tuan and his com­mander Viktor Gorbatko had docked with Salyut 6 to give more company to the residents, Ryumin and Popov.

Tuan’s adaptation to weightlessness was rather uncomfortable as he suffered a headache and loss of appetite, but he soon picked up to start his busy schedule of highly scientific tasks, such as taking photos of Vietnam with the MKF-6M camera to reveal details of tidal flooding, silting at river mouths and other hydrological features. The flight ended with a landing in Soyuz 36, at T + 7 days 20 hours 42 minutes, some 179 km (111 miles) southeast of Dzhezkazgan. Maximum altitude reached during the 51.6° mission was 351km (218 miles).

Milestones

75th manned space flight

44th Soviet manned space flight

37th Soyuz manned space flight

36th (original) Soyuz manned space flight

1st manned space flight by a Vietnamese

6th Interkosmos mission

1980-075A 18 September 1980

Pad 1, Site 5, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan

26 September 1980

17 km southeast of Dzhezkazgan

R7 (11A511U); spacecraft serial number (7K-T) #54

7 days 20 hrs 43 min 24 sec

Tamyr (Tamyr)

Cuban Interkosmos visiting mission programme

Flight Crew

ROMANENKO, Yuri Viktorovich, 36, Soviet Air Force, commander,

2nd mission

Previous mission: Soyuz 26 (1977)

TAMAYO-MENDEZ, Arnaldo, 38, Cuban Air Force, cosmonaut researcher

Flight Log

Even the most enthusiastic space watcher, except the few in Cuba, would have found the latest Interkosmos mission little more than a monotonous repeat of those that had gone before. Cuban Arnaldo Tamayo-Mendez studied the crystal­lisation of sucrose in weightlessness for the benefit of his country’s sugar industry on his Soyuz 38 mission, with commander Yuri Romanenko. This began at 01: 11 hrs local time at the Baikonur Cosmodrome and, as usual, 26 hours later, Soyuz 38 homed in on Salyut 6 with its occupants Ryumin and Popov.

Other experiments being conducted by Mendez included one in which he wore heavy overshoes, to assess ways of preventing muscular deterioration in space. One unique point about the mission, apart from its Cuban connection, was that at its end it touched down within 2.9 km (2 miles) of the predicted landing point in the most accurate landing in the Soviet space programme to date. Flight time was 7 days 20 hours 43 minutes 24 seconds and the mission achieved a maximum altitude of 350 km (217 miles) in the 51.6° orbit.

Milestones

76th manned space flight 45th Soviet manned space flight 38th Soyuz manned space flight

37th (original) Soyuz manned space flight 1st manned space flight by a Cuban 7th Interkosmos mission

1980-094A 27 November 1980

Pad 1, Site 5, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan

10 December 1980

129 km southeast of Dzhezkazgan

R7 (11A511U); spacecraft serial number #08L

12 days 19hrs 7 min 42 sec

Mayak (Lighthouse)

Salyut 6 maintenance mission; Soyuz T three-crew test flight

Flight Crew

KIZIM, Leonid Denisovich, 39, Soviet Air Force, commander MAKAROV, Oleg Grigoryevich, 47, civilian, flight engineer, 4th mission Previous missions: Soyuz 12 (1973); Soyuz 18-1 (1975); Soyuz 27 (1978) STREKALOV, Gennady Mikhailovich, 40, civilian, research engineer

Flight Log

The first three-crew Soviet manned space flight since the Soyuz 11 disaster of 1971, Soyuz T3 was also the first maintenance mission, designed to overhaul the aging Salyut 6 space station to prolong its already long life sufficiently to accommodate a further three missions, two of which were international flights. Lift-off came at 19: 18hrs local time at Baikonur, carrying rookie commander Leonid Kizim and research engineer Gennady Strekalov, along with the first Soviet space four-timer, Oleg Makarov. Unlike Soyuz T2, this flight made a totally automatic docking with Salyut 6 and a hectic two-week repair mission began.

In addition to the busy schedule of repairs, the crew did conduct two science experiments; to study the behaviour of crystals in weightlessness, extensively using the onboard furnaces; and the use of a laser-based holographic system to photograph the dissolution of a salt crystal. Kizim and his colleagues overhauled the hydraulic system on board Salyut, installing a new hydraulic unit and pumps. They also replaced a programming device in the control system, fitted a new transducer to a compressor in the in-orbit refuelling system, and replaced electronic components in the communica­tions system.

While the crew was still on board, the Progress 11 tanker’s main propulsion system was fired to raise the station’s orbit. The tanker was then discarded, followed by the crew’s entry into Soyuz T3 and an automatic retro-fire and re-entry to a landing at T + 12 days 19 hours 7 minutes 42 seconds, 129 km (80 miles) southeast of Dzhezkazgan. Maximum altitude achieved during the 51.6° mission was 398 km (247 miles). Salyut was ready for another long-duration visit and in preparation

for it, another Progress was dispatched from Baikonur, to await a new crew. With Soyuz T3 featuring a three-person crew, it proved the greater flexibility of the new spacecraft and opened up the possibility of crewing a Salyut with three residents instead of two, offering greater productivity. However, the Soviets had revealed that on future Soyuz T missions, the crew composition would vary and would not always include a cosmonaut researcher (who had no piloting functions) in the third seat. On occasion, the third seat would be occupied by additional supplies or science experiments.

Milestones

77th manned space flight

46th Soviet manned space flight

39th Soyuz manned space flight

2nd Soyuz manned space flight

1st Soviet three-person crew since 1971

Flight Crew

VIKTORENKO, Alexandr Stepanovich, 44, Russian Air Force, commander, 3rd mission

Previous missions: Soyuz TM3 (1987), Soyuz TM8 (1989)

KALERI, Alexandr Yuriyevich, 35, civilian, flight engineer FLADE, Klaus-Dietrich, 39, German Air Force, cosmonaut researcher

Flight Log

The fully automated docking of TM14 to Mir was final confirmation that the Kurs rendezvous system had been repaired. After being bumped off the crew for TM13, Kaleri finally made it to Mir, alongside German cosmonaut Klaus Flade who con­ducted fourteen German experiments during his week aboard the station. His programme included materials processing experiments and Flade would also provide baseline biomedical data in preparation for extended orbital operations on the ESA Columbus laboratory, part of the Freedom Space Station programme. He would return to Earth with Volkov and Krikalev in the TM13 spacecraft, after they had spent the week briefing the new resident crew and packing their equipment for the return to Earth.

At this time, there was a strong possibility that the cash-starved Russian Space Agency might be forced to temporarily abandon Mir until new funds could be secured to support further manned operations. The EO-11 crew were therefore never sure when they might be called back to Earth. This residency was also very “quiet”, with the cosmonauts continuing the on-going programme of Earth observations, materials processing, biomedical studies and astrophysical observations, balanced with routine maintenance, housekeeping and unloading the Progress supply vehicles. The docking of Progress M13 was aborted on 2 July due to a fault in the onboard software, but

reprogramming by operators on the ground resolved the problem, allowing a safe docking two days later to deliver some of the experiments for the upcoming French mission.

On 8 July, the crew performed the only EVA of their residency (of 2 hours 3 minutes) to examine the gyrodynes on the outside of Kvant 2. A dozen gyrodynes stabilised the station as it orbited the Earth. Similar to gyroscopes, these spinning devices generated angular momentum to maintain Mir’s orientation to the Sun, which was essential for the solar arrays to be able to absorb energy to produce electricity for use on the station. Though the gyrodynes consumed considerable power to start with, once they were spinning, they would run for some time with minimal energy con­sumption. Five of the six units on Kvant 1 had exceeded their five-year design life but four of the six on Kvant 2 had failed. During this EVA, the cosmonauts wielded large shears to cut through thermal insulation on Kvant 2 to reach the gyrodynes and inspected and photographed the units for engineers back on the ground as part of an evaluation for future EVA operations to remove and replace them. The cosmonauts also evaluated binoculars that were compatible with the Orlan suit’s visor to allow inspection of the more remote areas of Mir, where it would be difficult, if not impossible, for a cosmonaut to get to.

This was a quiet tour of duty on the space station. The two cosmonauts completed a programme of agricultural photography and spectral observation before dividing

their time between these commitments and their astrophysical observations. As the crew completed these studies, the onboard furnaces were being run in semi­automated mode. Towards the end of their residency the crew received the EO-12 cosmonauts and French cosmonaut researcher Michel Tognini, who would complete his own research programme during a 12-day hand-over period, and return with the EO-11 cosmonauts.

Milestones

148th manned space flight

73rd Russian manned space flight

21st Russian and 45th flight with EVA operations

14th Soyuz flight to Mir

11th main Mir crew

9th visiting crew (Flade)

66th Soyuz manned mission 13th Soyuz TM manned mission

Viktorenko celebrates his 45th birthday in space (29 Mar) Kaleri celebrates his 36th birthday in space (13 May)

Flight Crew

BLAHA, John Elmer, 51, USAF, commander. 4th mission Previous missions: STS-29 (1989); STS-33 (1989); STS-43 (1991) SEARFOSS, Richard Alan, 37, USAF, pilot

SEDDON, Margaret Rhea, 45, civilian, mission specialist 1, payload commander, 3rd mission

Previous missions: STS 51-D (1985); STS-40 (1991)

McARTHUR Jr., William Surles, 42, US Army, mission specialist 2 WOLF, David Alexander, 37, civilian, mission specialist 3 LUCID, Shannon Wells, 50, civilian, mission specialist 4, 4th mission Previous missions: STS 51-G (1985); STS-34 (1989); STS-43 (1991) FETTMAN, Martin Joseph, 36, civilian, payload specialist 1

Flight Log

The first attempt at launching STS-58 on 14 October was scrubbed at the T — 31 second mark, as a result of a failed range safety computer. The next attempt on 15 October was scrubbed at T — 9 minutes due to a failed S-band transponder aboard Columbia. The launch on 18 October was also delayed, but only by a few seconds due to an aircraft straying into the launch exclusion zone.

Over the next 14 days, the crew, working a single-shift system, conducted the SLS – 2 research programme and other research objectives, including the Orbiter Accelera­tion Research Experiments, SAREX, and Pilot In-flight Landing Operations Trainer (PILOT), a portable laptop computer simulator that allowed the commander and the pilot to maintain their proficiency for approach and landing on longer missions.

The SLS payload included 14 experiments focusing on four areas: regular physiology, cardiovascular/cardiopulmonary, musculoskeletal and neuro-science ex­periments. The Rotating Dome Experiment was used in conjunction with the first

flight prototype of the Astronaut Science Advisor (ASA), a laptop computer program designed to assist the crew member in conducting experiments to increase the efficiency of activities. This was also termed the “principle investigator in a box”. Of the fourteen experiments, eight focused on the astronauts, while the other six were conducted on the 48 rodents aboard. Six of the rodents were killed and dissected during the mission, yielding the first tissue samples collected during a space mission which were not altered by re-exposure to the Earth’s gravity.

During the mission, the crew collected over 650 different samples from the rodents and themselves. This greatly increased the database of life science research and this work continued, at least for the “payload crew’’ (Seddon, Fettman, Lucid and Wolf) after landing. For the first week after the end of the mission, these four astronauts gave regular blood and urine samples to reveal how the body readjusted to gravity after two weeks in space. The blood samples were collected over a period of 45 days after landing. The combined data from SLS-1 and SLS-2 helped to build a more compre­hensive picture of how animals and humans adapted to space flight and readapted to life back on Earth, an important milestone in developing protocols and research programmes for the space station. There were plans to fly a third SLS, which could have become a dedicated French Spacelab mission, but this was not pursued due to budget restrictions, launch manifest constraints and the introduction of the Shuttle- Mir programme, which drew resources away from Spacelab missions.

Milestones

164th manned space flight

88th US manned space flight

58th Shuttle mission

15th flight of Columbia

2nd flight of SLS series

9th Spacelab Long Module mission

Longest Shuttle mission to date

4th longest US spaceflight (after three Skylab missions) 1st veterinarian to fly in space (Fettman)

1st tissue samples collected during a space flight (rodents)

Flight Crew

COVEY, Richard Oswalt, 47, USAF, commander, 4th mission Previous missions: STS 51-I (1985); STS-26 (1988); STS-38 (1990)

BOWERSOX, Kenneth Duane, 37, USN, pilot, 2nd mission Previous mission: STS-50 (1992)

THORNTON, Kathryn Cordell Ryan, 41, civilian, mission specialist 1,

3rd mission

Previous missions: STS-33 (1989); STS-49 (1992)

NICOLLIER, Claude, 49, civilian, mission specialist 2, 2nd mission Previous mission: STS-46 (1992)

HOFFMAN, Jeffery Alan, 49, civilian, mission specialist 3, 4th mission Previous missions: STS 51-D (1985); STS-35 (1990); STS-46 (1992) MUSGRAVE, Franklin Story, 58, civilian, mission specialist 4, payload commander, 5th mission

Previous missions: STS-6 (1983); STS 51-F (1985); STS-33 (1989); STS-44 (1991) AKERS, Thomas Dale, 42, USAF, mission specialist 5, 3rd mission Previous missions: STS-41 (1990); STS-49 (1992)

Flight Log

Described as one of the most challenging manned missions ever attempted, the crew of STS-61 completed a record-breaking five back-to-back EVAs during the first on – orbit service of the Hubble Space Telescope. Many of their tasks were completed sooner than expected, allowing the few contingencies that did occur to be dealt with smoothly. The original launch was to have occurred from Pad 39A at KSC, but following the rollout of the stack to the pad, contamination was discovered in the payload change-out room. As a result, the STS-61 launch was moved to Pad B.

At an altitude of 522 km above the Earth, Musgrave (top) and Hoffman are seen riding on the RMS during the fifth and final EVA of the mission to service the Hubble Telescope, one of the most successful space missions to date. The west coast of Australia forms the backdrop to the scene

The move occurred without incident on 15 November but the first launch attempt on 1 December was scrubbed due to adverse weather conditions at the SLF.

A series of service missions had always been part of the HST programme. At regular intervals, a Shuttle would be sent to repair, replace or upgrade onboard instruments, equipment or systems prolonging the operational life of the facility and improving the quality and quantity of scientific discoveries over the planned fifteen – year life of the telescope. With the focusing difficulties encountered shortly after deployment from STS-31 in 1990, some media reports incorrectly labelled this flight as rescue mission, specially organised to save the telescope. The mission did restore the telescope to full working order, but the corrective optics were incorporated into a far more extensive, and already planned, servicing operation. Rendezvous with Hubble was achieved on FD 3, with the RMS grapple and berthing in the payload bay completed the same day. The telescope was berthed upright in the payload bay of the Shuttle, but remained under the command of the Space Telescope Operations Control Center (STOCC) located at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Following each servicing task, the STOCC controllers verified the interfaces between the new or serviced hardware and the telescope, ensuring at each stage that the telescope would be capable of independent operations once released from the payload bay.

Over a five-day period (4-8 December), the EVA team of four astronauts worked in pairs to complete the complex and demanding programme to restore the telescope to full working order. During the first EVA, four gyros that were situated in pairs in two Rate Sensing Units were replaced, along with two Electronic Control Units that directed the RSUs and eight electrical fuse plugs. The first EVA (7 hours 54 minutes on 4 Dec, conducted by Hoffman (EV1) and Musgrave (EV2)) was the second longest in the US programme to date and the only problem encountered was difficulty in closing the compartment doors after replacing the RSUs. During the next EVA (6 hours 36 minutes on 5 Dec, conducted by Thornton (EV3) and Akers (EV4)), one of the primary objectives of the servicing mission was completed, that of installing new solar arrays. The old arrays were scheduled to be returned to Earth for examination after over three years in space, but one of them refused to fully retract due to a kink in the framework and had to be jettisoned. The other was stowed in the payload bay without difficulty.

The third EVA (6 hours 47 minutes on 6 Dec, the second for Hoffman and Musgrave) was designed to replace the Wide Field/Planetary Camera (WF/PC), one of the five scientific instruments on the telescope, in a four-hour operation. In fact, the astronauts accomplished the exchange with the improved WF/PCII (an upgraded spare modified to compensate for the flawed mirror) in just forty minutes. Two magnetometers were also installed in the top of the telescope. EVA 4 (6 hours 50 minutes on 7 Dec, the second for Thornton and Akers) included the replacement of another primary instrument, the High-Speed Photometer, with the Corrective Optics for Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR) unit – often dubbed Hubble’s “spec­tacles” – which redirected light to three of the four remaining instruments, thus compensating for the flaw in the primary mirror. The astronauts also installed a co-processor that improved the memory and speed of the onboard computer. During this EVA, Tom Akers achieved a new cumulative record for an American astronaut

on EVA (29 hours 39 minutes), surpassing the 20-year-old record set by Gene Cernan on Apollo 17 at 24 hours 14 minutes. Kathy Thornton became the record-holder for female EVA astronauts at 21 hours 10 minutes. Both had performed EVAs on STS-49 in 1992. During the final EVA (7 hours 21 minutes on 9 Dec, the third by Hoffman and Musgrave), the astronauts replaced the Solar Array Drive Electronics (SADE) unit, as well as installing the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph Redundancy (GHRS) equipment and placing two protective covers over the original magnetometer.

During FD 8, prior to the final EVA, the Shuttle’s orbit was boosted to 595 km. At this height, the telescope would be released on FD 9, after deployment of the twin boom antennas, unfurling of solar arrays and checking of onboard systems. The redeployment was delayed several hours when ground controllers had to troubleshoot erratic telemetric data from the telescope’s systems monitor. This had occurred before and was not connected to the recent servicing by the astronauts. The mission ended one orbit earlier than planned to allow the crew two landing opportunities at KSC.

Milestones

165th manned space flight

89th US manned space flight

59th Shuttle mission

5th flight of Endeavour

1st Hubble servicing mission

29th US and 53rd flight with EVA operations

1st flight of ESA astronaut as MS2

US astronaut cumulative EVA record – Akers

World female cumulative EVA record – Thornton

1996-001A 11 January 1996

Pad 39B, Kennedy Space Center, Florida 20 January 1996

Runway 15, Shuttle Landing Facility, KSC, Florida OV-105 Endeavour/ET-75/SRB BI-077/SSME #1 2028; #2 2039; #3 2036 8 days 22 hrs 1 min 47 sec Endeavour

Retrieval of Japanese Space Flyer Unit; deployment and retrieval of OAST-Flyer; EDFT-03

Flight Crew

DUFFY, Brian, 42, USAF, commander, 3rd mission Previous missions: STS-45 (1992); STS-57 (1993)

JETT Jr., Brent Ward, 37, USN, pilot

CHIAO, Leroy, 35, civilian, mission specialist 1, 2nd mission

Previous mission: STS-65 (1994)

SCOTT, Winston Elliott, 45, USN, mission specialist 2 WAKATA, Koichi, 32, civilian, Japanese mission specialist 3 BARRY, Daniel Thomas, 42, civilian, mission specialist 4

Flight Log

The launch of STS-72 was delayed for 23 minutes due both to problems with ground sites and the need to avoid a potential collision with an item of space debris. On FD 3, Japanese MS Wakata used the RMS to grasp the Japanese Space Flyer Unit (SFU), which had originally been launched in March 1995 aboard an H-2 rocket from the Tanegashima Space Centre in Japan. Over a ten-month period, more than a dozen onboard instruments and experiments had been operating in a research programme that encompassed materials and biological science. Prior to grappling the unit with the RMS, the twin solar arrays had to be jettisoned after it was found that they were not correctly retracted.

The next day, the Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology Flyer (OAST – Flyer) was deployed, again by Wakata using the RMS, on an independent two-day flight that extended to approximately 72 km from Endeavour. Attached to the SPARTAN platform were four experiments that investigated spacecraft contamina­tion, global positioning technology, laser ordnance devices and an amateur radio package. The flyer was retrieved on FD 6. In addition to the deployment and retrieval operations, the crew had a programme of payload bay and mid-deck secondary

experiments to conduct, which mainly consisted of studies in ozone concentrations in the atmosphere, a laser to accurately measure the distance between the Earth’s surface and the orbiter, and a range of biological and biomedical experiments.

The crew also completed two EVAs as part of the EDFT programme of prep­aration for extensive EVA activities during ISS construction. During the first EVA (15 Jan, 6 hours 9 minutes), astronauts Chiao (EV1) and Barry (EV2) evaluated a new portable work platform and the Rigid Umbilical Structure, which was being devel­oped as a possible retention device for ISS fluid and electrical lines. During the second EVA (17 Jan, 6 hours 54 minutes), this time conducted by Chiao and Scott (EV3), the portable work platform was again evaluated and the astronauts also tested the design of a utility box, another item under development for ISS, which would hold avionics and fluid line connections. During the EVA, Scott tested his suit in severe cold temperatures of up to —75°C, to find out whether the revised design would keep him warm during the test. In fact, the 35-minute test resulted in temperatures of — 122°C being recorded, providing a tough test of the suit’s extremities (fingers and feet) and coolant loop bypass system. Scott reported that he was aware of the low temperatures but remained comfortable and though had he been working rather than staying still, he determined that he would have felt warmer in either situation.

Milestones

185th manned space flight

104th US manned space flight

74th Shuttle mission

10th flight of Endeavour

33rd US and 60th flight with EVA operations

3rd EDFT exercise