CREWING FOR A SOYUZ MISSION TO BURAN

By mid-1989, several months after Buran’s maiden flight on 15 November 1988, plans were finalized for a second mission that would far exceed the first one in complexity. The mission would use the second flight vehicle (2K, sometimes called “Buran-2”) and was therefore dubbed 2K1. The plan was for the orbiter to be launched unmanned and fly to the Mir space station, where it would dock with the axial APAS-89 docking port of the Kristall module. Before that, Kristall would be relo­cated from its lateral port on the Mir multiple docking adapter to the station’s front axial port. After docking, the Mir resident crew would board the orbiter to determine the state of its on-board systems, with one of the possible objectives being to use the vehicle’s remote manipulator arm to move a payload from the payload bay to Kristall’s lateral APAS docking port. One NPO Energiya official said that the pay­load was a small one-ton module housing a Fosvich X-ray telescope similar to the one on Mir’s Kvant module. See [69]. Also installed in the payload bay would have been a pressurized module (37KB) about the size of the Kvant module with instrumentation to record various flight parameters.

Subsequently, the orbiter would undock and continue its flight autonomously. Around the same time, a manned Soyuz equipped with an APAS-89 docking port would be launched to dock with the orbiter. The crew would transfer to the orbiter and perform one day of testing. After the Soyuz undocked, it would fly on to Mir to link up with Kristall, while the unmanned 2K orbiter returned back to Baykonur after a one-week mission [70].

In the late 1980s NPO Energiya was ordered to build three Soyuz spacecraft (serial numbers 101, 102, 103) with APAS-89 docking ports. These vehicles were intended in the first place for possible rescue missions to stranded Buran crews during the test flight program, but it was decided to use the first one in the framework of the

2K1 mission [71]. The flight was partially seen as a dress rehearsal for such a potential rescue mission.

LII demanded that at least one of its Buran pilots be included in the Soyuz crew to give him the necessary experience for the first manned Buran mission [72]. With no or few Soyuz seats available in the mainstream Mir program, this was the ultimate opportunity for a Soyuz familiarization flight, the more so because it involved Buran itself. However, in 1990 a training group was formed for the Soyuz mission consisting of three GKNII pilots and three TsPK military engineers:

Stepanov and Fefelov were assigned in April 1990 and the others in October/ November 1990. It is not entirely clear if training advanced to the point that actual crews were formed, although Kadenyuk has claimed he was in the second back-up crew with Fefelov [73]. The most active training was performed by the three pilots, who faced the unprecedented task of docking Soyuz with Buran. All three spent many hours in TsPK’s Soyuz simulators, practicing dockings both with Buran and Mir. The three engineers reportedly never underwent any dedicated mission training [74].

The 2K1 mission was originally scheduled for 1991, but kept slipping as future prospects for the Buran program grew ever dimmer. Officially, the three pilots and Illarionov remained assigned until March 1992, and Fefelov and Stepanov until October 1992 [75]. Kadenyuk has said the mission was officially canceled in August 1992 [76].

Soyuz craft nr. 101 was eventually launched as Soyuz TM-16 on 24 January 1993, carrying another resident crew (Gennadiy Manakov and Aleksandr Poleshchuk) to the Mir space station. Equipped with an APAS-89 docking port, it was the only Soyuz vehicle ever to dock with the Kristall module. Soyuz “rescue” vehicles nr. 102 and 103, which had been only partly assembled, were modified as ordinary Soyuz TM spacecraft with standard “probe” docking mechanisms and were given new serial numbers [77].