The Soyuz mission of Igor Volk

As the leader of the LII “Wolf Pack”, Igor Volk was eyed from the start as the commander for the first manned Buran mission and was therefore the first candidate eligible for a Soyuz “warm-up mission”.

In September 1982 Volk was teamed up with cosmonauts Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov for a brief visiting mission to the Salyut-7 space station in late 1983. Their hosts were supposed to be Salyut-7’s third Main Expedition crew (EO-3) of Vladimir Lyakhov, Aleksandr Aleksandrov, and Aleksandr Serebrov, who were scheduled to fly a six-month mission from June until December 1983 after having replaced the EO-2 crew (Titov-Strekalov-Pronina) in orbit.

Crewing for the visiting flight looked as follows:

The 1983 flight schedule was thrown into disarray when the EO-2 crew (Pronina having been replaced by Serebrov) failed to dock their Soyuz T-8 spacecraft with Salyut-7 in April 1983. The new plan was for Lyakhov and Aleksandrov to fly to the station aboard Soyuz T-9 in June 1983 and be relieved by Titov and Strekalov in August for a 100-day mission to complete some of the original EO-2 mission objec­tives. Volk’s mission was scrapped for 1983 since no Soyuz vehicle would be available in time to fly a visiting mission to Salyut-7. The crews for the visiting flight were disbanded in May 1983 and Kizim and Solovyov moved to the training group for long-duration missions [50].

On 26 September 1983, their mission delayed several weeks, Titov and Strekalov were poised for launch again when a fire broke out at the base of their launch vehicle with less than a minute to go in the countdown. Only seconds before the launch vehicle exploded, the Soyuz was pulled away to safety by the emergency escape system. Rather than return to Earth, Lyakhov and Aleksandrov remained aboard the station until late November to complete some of the tasks originally planned for their replacements. Salyut was left behind unmanned, waiting for the next long-duration crew to arrive aboard Soyuz T-10 in February 1984.

Yolk, Kizim, and Solovyov relax after a training session in the Soyuz simulator. This is the only known photo of Yolk’s original crew (B. Yis files).

This time it was the turn of Yolk’s former crewmates Kizim and Solovyov, who were joined by doctor Oleg Atkov for a record 8-month mission. Two visiting missions were planned, one (Soyuz T-ll) carrying a Soviet-Indian crew and the second (Soyuz T-l2) with Yolk in the passenger seat.

Yolk was still without a crew, but all that changed on 17 November 1983, when NASA announced that Kathryn Sullivan would become the first woman to conduct a spacewalk late the following year on Space Shuttle mission STS-41G [51]. It was too tempting for the Soviets not to try and steal this space first, one of the last to be clinched. Under pressure from NPO Energiya chief Yalentin Glushko it was quickly decided to include a woman in the second visiting crew to conduct an EYA just weeks before Sullivan’s [52].

The crew of Soyuz T-12 (B. Vis files).

This decision may have been a blessing for the LII team, because there had been opposition to a dedicated visiting mission with an LII pilot, amongst others from Glushko himself. In contrast to LII, Glushko was apparently in favor of automatic Buran landings and was not keen on organizing a flight just for the LII pilots to gain flight experience [53].

Within a month of the NASA announcement, crews had been formed. Commander would be Vladimir Dzhanibekov, one of the most experienced active commanders around. His flight engineer would be Svetlana Savitskaya, who had already flown an 8-day mission in August 1982. That too was believed to have been a rush assignment for her, as she flew less than a year before Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space in June 1983. The third seat, which basically was up for grabs, was given to Volk, who had been in line to fly the mission anyway.

The crewing for Soyuz T-12 was:

Prime crew Back-up crew

Vladimir Dzhanibekov Vladimir Vasyutin

Svetlana Savitskaya Viktor Savinykh

Igor Volk Yekaterina Ivanova

Yolk, Dzhanibekov, and Savitskaya shortly after landing (B. Vis files).

Minutes after the traditional post-landing crew photo was taken, Yolk left to begin the most important part of his mission—flying aircraft along the flight path of a Buran shuttle returning from space—leaving Dzhanibekov and Savitskaya behind (B. Hendrickx files).

The back-up assignments raised some eyebrows when they finally became known to Western space analysts in 1988 [54]. No second back-up crew was named and that, together with the composition of the first back-up crew, was a clear indication that this was a “crew of opportunity” and not one that was part of the overall, long-term mission planning for Salyut-7 expeditions. Judging by the absence of an LII pilot in the back-up crew, it looked as if the importance of flying a woman cosmonaut to perform an EVA far outweighed the need to give one of the LII pilots his mandatory spaceflight experience. Vladimir Dzhanibekov claims that Rimantas Stankyavichus was “in the reserve” for the mission, but denied that he had been a back-up for Volk and there aren’t any official sources that say he was [55].

It isn’t even certain that the back-up crew actually would have flown in case either Dzhanibekov or Savitskaya had become disqualified for some reason. It has been assumed that the flight would only proceed if the woman conducting the EVA was Savitskaya, not Ivanova. Rumors have it that her father, Soviet Air Force Marshal Yevgeniy Savitskiy, had been one of the driving forces behind the whole flight, and although no confirmation has ever been given, several cosmonauts have not ruled out that possibility [56]. As the crew was not supposed to exchange Soyuz vehicles, there was no real operational need to fly the Soyuz T-12 mission.

Training for the mission began on 26 December 1983 and was completed on 4 July 1984. Having taken their final exams, the crew was declared ready for the flight. Soyuz T-12 was launched on 17 July 1984 and reached orbit to begin a rather uneventful flight to Salyut-7. The TASS news agency reported that “the spaceship’s flight program envisaged a link-up with the Salyut-7/Soyuz T-11 orbital complex’’, after which its crew “were to carry out scientific and technical research and experi­ments together with [the station’s resident crew]’’ [57].

With the Buran program still a state secret, nowhere was it reported or even hinted that Volk’s presence on board had anything to do with a Soviet shuttle program, nor was any indication given that his main task would come only after landing. Almost six months after the mission, the British Interplanetary Society’s Spaceflight magazine raised the question: “One puzzle: why did Volk, an experienced test pilot, occupy the passenger seat of a Soyuz T which is normally occupied by non­pilot researchers or foreign cosmonauts?” [58]. The answer, however, could not be given.

On 18 July Soyuz T-12 successfully docked with the Salyut station and Dzhanibekov, Savitskaya, and Volk were welcomed on board by Kizim, Solovyov, and Atkov. In its reports, TASS said that the program of joint operations “included technical and technological experiments, medical, biological, astrophysical and other studies, and Earth photography and observations in the fields of meteorology, geology and environmental protection’’ [59].

During the joint operations, news services did give details about the experiments that were conducted, but only very limited information was given about Volk’s activities. One interesting bit of information came from flight director Viktor Blagov, who told reporters that Volk was not taking part in any physical exercises to counter the effects of weightlessness. Instead, he was taking special tablets for that purpose, while being continuously monitored by Atkov and by doctors on Earth, both during the mission and after the flight. According to TASS, the results of this experiment would help understand how the human body reacted to spaceflight [60]. Besides this, Volk conducted two experiments that studied his eyesight. One focused on in-depth vision and the eye’s resolving power, while the other analysed his eye’s color percep­tion, its ability to discriminate between various shades of color.

Although not reported at the time, Volk also carried out an experiment called “Pilot” intended to see if his adaptation to zero-g would affect his ability to operate flight controls. For this purpose, several flight controls and display panels similar to those used on Buran were installed in the Soyuz T-12 orbital module [61].

Volk’s presence on board was almost ignored by the media, especially when Svetlana Savitskaya and Vladimir Dzhanibekov performed an EVA on 25 July that lasted a little over three and a half hours. This was the first EVA by a woman and it took place less than three months before Kathy Sullivan’s spacewalk on STS-41G.

On 29 July Dzhanibekov, Savitskaya, and Volk landed safely on Earth, 140 km southeast of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan, after a flight lasting 11 days, 19 hours, and 14 minutes. Volk spent about 20 minutes suspended upside down inside the descent capsule as recovery crews struggled to remove him from the capsule. Afterwards, the cosmonauts were put in chairs to relax a little, as was tradition. But right after their initial medical check-ups, Volk was about to begin his principal experiment (not reported by the media at the time). He was taken to a helicopter that would fly him to Dzhezkazgan. Although not planned, Volk was granted permission by the pilot to occupy the co-pilot seat and take control of the helicopter. Only at that point was it realized that no one had thought of bringing Volk’s flying boots. As a result he was forced to fly the helicopter in his socks.

Immediately after arriving in Dzhezkazgan, Dzhanibekov and Savitskaya under­went the traditional welcome by Kazakh government representatives, while Volk, still without his boots, boarded a Tu-154LL Buran training aircraft and flew it to his LII home base in Zhukovskiy near Moscow. The approach and landing were performed following the flight path of a Buran shuttle returning from space. To achieve that, the engine thrust was reversed, the landing gear was lowered, and all flaps were put in such a position that they would give maximum braking effect. Under these con­ditions, the Tupolev almost fell from the sky, just like Buran would do when returning from space. As soon as he had parked the Tupolev on the tarmac, Volk donned a pressure suit, climbed aboard a MiG-25 fighter, and together with an instructor flew all the way back to Baykonur. It turned out that the space mission had not in any way adversely influenced his flying abilities, so there were no objec­tions for cosmonauts to fly Buran back from orbit [62].