On June 8, 2015 is the 30th anniversary of docking between Soyuz T-13 space vehicle and the faulty orbital station Salyut 7 staying in uncontrolled flight.
The recue expedition crew included commander Vladimir Dzhanibekov with a broad experience in a manually operated rendezvous and a good understanding of the station Salyut 7 and Viktor Savinykh from NPO Energia. Due to high professionalism, the crew succeeded in performance of repair/maintenance work and refurbishment of the station within just a few days. The cosmonauts had to perform operations under severe conditions and extremely low temperatures.
The Salyut 7 rescue operation was unprecedented in the world cosmonautics history: we pioneered in successful docking of the manned space vehicle with inoperative (uncontrolled) in-orbit object.
Modified orbital station Salyut 7 was designed for a longer period of operational use (up to 5 years) than its predecessors. The station modifications included an increased volume of internal habitable space, improved life conditions for crew members, additional solar arrays installed. In order to perform extravehicular activity, improved spacesuits Orlan were first used on the space station Salyut. The spacesuit made it possible for cosmonauts to stay and perform work in open space up to 6.5 hours. On April 19, 1982 the Salyut 7 was injected into orbit by Proton launch vehicle. The crews had worked on a permanent basis at the station till 1984. The last long-duration expedition left the Salyut 7 in October 1984. At that time the orbital station was serviceable. Some time later, however, communication with the Salyut 7 was lost.
On February 12, 1985 malfunction was found in one of the radio command link units through which radio commands were sent from MCC as well as downlink information. Analysis of the onboard systems condition showed that an automatic switchover to the second transmitter had occurred. Uplink command to resume operation of the first transmitter was generated. The command was received and the station proceeded its flight in next orbit. But next communication session was a failure: no information came from the station.
Soyuz T-13 space vehicle was injected into orbit on June 6, 1985, in about four months after there had been a communication loss with the station Salyut 7. It took almost three months to train the members of the rescue expedition which were to restore the station operation. In that period of time the procedure for MCC interaction with the Ministry of Defense space control service was developed. The space vehicle docking with the inoperative station was performed in a manually operated mode via target designations from the ground and laser rangefinder. Thus, a principal possibility to bring active space vehicle of Soyuz type closely to any space object was demonstrated.
After its refurbishment, the orbital station Salyut 7 had operated six more years. For 9 years of its operational use, the orbital station was visited by 6 prime crews and 5 expeditions. The first cosmonauts from France and India took part in the visiting expeditions. The station was visited by 21 cosmonauts, 3 cosmonauts flew twice to the Salyut 7, one of them flew three time to the station. In addition, 11 manned space vehicles Soyuz T, 12 cargo vehicles Progress and 3 cargo vehicles of Cosmos series visited the orbital station. The orbital station Salyut 7 was used to perform 13 spacewalks, total duration of which was 48 hours 33 minutes.
posted 09-17-2014 10:02 AM
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