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Ivanov Georgi Rukavishnikov

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10 April 1979 17:34 GMT. Landing Date: 1979-04-12 16:35:06. Flight Time: 1.96 days. Alternate Name: Soyuz 33. Flight Up: Soyuz 33. Flight Back: Soyuz 33. Call Sign: Saturn (Saturn ). Crew: Ivanov Georgi, Rukavishnikov. Backup Crew: Aleksandrov Aleksandr, Romanenko. Program: Salyut 6.

Of note: First Bulgarian astronaut. Manned two crew. Flight under the Intercosmos programme of an international team consisting of N N Rukavishnikov (USSR) and G I Ivanov (Bulgaria). Unsuccessful mission. Failed to rendezvous with Salyut 6. Recovered April 12, 1979 16:35 GMT.

Narrative (adapted from D S F Portree's Mir Hardware Heritage, NASA RP-1357, 1995)

The problems began when Soyuz 33 fired its main engine while closing to within 4 km of the station. The burn, the sixth of the flight, was to have lasted 6 seconds, but the engine shut down after 3 seconds. The Igla docking system also failed. The EO-3 crew aboard Salyut 6 reported flames shooting sideways from the main engine, toward the backup engine, at the time of the shutdown. The docking was called off and the Soyuz 33 crew conducted a to return to Earth using the backup engine. The engine fired but did not shut off at the end of the planned 188-sec burn. Rukavishnikov, uncertain if the engine operated at the proper thrust, let it burn an additional 25 sec before shutting it down manually. As a result, Soyuz 33 made a steep ballistic reentry with gravity loads up to 10 g’s. Because the service module was discarded after deorbit burn, examination of the failed engine was impossible. The Soyuz 33 crew was to have traded its spacecraft for Soyuz 32. Still uncertain of the reliability of the Soyuz, Soyuz 34 was launched unmanned to the station to provide the crew with a fresh lifeboat.

• 1979 Apr 10 - Soyuz 33  Crew: Ivanov Georgi, Rukavishnikov. Spacecraft: Soyuz 7K-T. Payload: Soyuz 7K-T s/n 49. Mass: 6,860 kg (15,120 lb). Launch Site: Baikonur. Launch Vehicle: Soyuz 11A511U. Duration: 1.96 days. Perigee: 194 km (120 mi). Apogee: 261 km (162 mi). Inclination: 51.60 deg. Period: 89.00 min.

  Manned two crew. Flight under the Intercosmos programme of an international team consisting of N N Rukavishnikov (USSR) and G I Ivanov (Bulgaria). Unsuccessful mission. Failed to rendezvous with Salyut 6.

• 1979 Apr 12 - Landing of Soyuz 33 

  Soyuz 33 landed at 16:35 GMT.

• Clark, Philip, The Soviet Manned Space Program, Salamander Books, London, 1988. ISBN: 051756954X. By far the best account of the Soviet manned program, though now out of date due to the flood of revelations since Glasnost and the end of the cold war. More at amazon.com...

• JPL Mission and Spacecraft Library, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 1997. Accessed at: http://msl.jpl.nasa.gov/home.html.

• McDowell, Jonathan, Jonathan's Space Home Page, Harvard University, 1997-present. Jonathan McDowell's complete on-line listing of all objects orbited and over 20,000 rocket launches Accessed at: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html.

• USAF Satellite Database, USAF Institute of Technology, 1995. Accessed at: ftp://archive.afit.af.mil/pub/space/.

• Furniss, Tim, Manned Spaceflight Log, Jane's, London, 1986. ISBN: 0710604025. Summary of all manned spaceflights up to 1986. Pre-Glasnost, so many 'war stories' of Soviet manned spaceflight are not included. More at amazon.com...