| Salyut 7 EO-2 | |||
27 June 1983 09:12 GMT. Landing Date: 1983-11-23 19:58:00. Flight Time: 149.45 days. Alternate Name: Soyuz T-9. Flight Up: Soyuz T-9. Flight Back: Soyuz T-9. Call Sign: Proton (Proton ). Crew: Aleksandrov, Lyakhov. Backup Crew: Strekalov, Titov Vladimir. Program: Salyut 7. Manned two crew. Docked with Salyut 7. Transported to the Salyut-7 orbital station a crew consisting of V A Lyakhov, commander of the spacecraft, and A P Aleksandrov, flight engineer, to conduct scientific and technical research and experiments. Narrative (adapted from D S F Portree's Mir Hardware Heritage, NASA RP-1357, 1995) The EO-2 crew docked with the Salyut 7 station on June 28, 1983. Almost immediately after docking at Salyut 7’s aft port, the Protons entered Cosmos 1443 and commenced transferring the 3.5 tons of cargo lining its walls to Salyut 7. This included solar arrays to augment Salyut 7's power, to have been installed by the crew of the aborted Soyuz T-8. On July 27 a small object struck a Salyut 7 viewport. It blasted out a 4-mm crater, but did not penetrate the outer of the window’s two panes. The Soviets believed it was a member of the Delta Aquarid meteor shower, though it may have been a small piece of orbital debris. By 14 August the crew had loaded Cosmos 1443’s VA re-entry capsule with 350 kg of experiment results and hardware no longer in use. It could have held 500 kg, had they had that much to put in. Cosmos 1443 then undocked, in spite of Western predictions that the FGB component would remain attached to Salyut 7 as a space station module. The VA capsule soft-landed on August 23, and the FGB component continued in orbit until it was deorbited over the Pacific Ocean on September 19. On 16 August Soyuz T-9 was repositioned by rotating Salyut 7, freeing the aft port for Progress 17. Progress 17 docked three days later. During refuelling by Progress 17, the main oxidiser line of the Salyut 7 propulsion system ruptured. The seriousness of the malfunction was not immediately apparent in the West. However, after the malfunction, Salyut 7 had to rely on the main propulsion systems of visiting Progress freighters for maintaining orbital altitude. On September 26 a Soyuz spacecraft bearing Vladimir Titov and Gennadi Strekalov stood atop a Soyuz booster at Baikonur Cosmodrome. This was the Soyuz T-8 crew, again set to accomplish their mission of augmenting the Salyut 7 solar arrays. About 90 sec before planned launch time, the booster caught fire. Titov and Strekalov, who had been unable to dock with Salyut 7 on the Soyuz T-8 mission, were rocketed away from the pad by the Soyuz escape tower, while the booster exploded behind them. free of the booster, which exploded on the pad. Progress 18 resupplied the station on October 22-November 13, 1983. Meanwhile, following the second failure of Titov and Strekalov to reach the station, it was up to Lyakhov and Alexandrov to carry out the much-delayed solar array augmentation EVAs despite the fact they had not trained for it on the ground. They used two Yakor foot restraints installed on Salyut 7 near the base of the solar array. Their first EVA, on November 1, lasted 2 hr, 49 min. The cosmonauts added a new panel to one edge of Salyut 7’s top (centre) array. The second EVA, on November 3, was a repeat of the first. It lasted 2 hr, 55 min. Together the two new panels increased Salyut 7’s available electricity by 50%. The Protons replaced air lost through the EVAs from tanks in Progress 18 before casting it off. Progress 18’s main engine raised Salyut 7’s altitude to 356 km by 326 km on November 4. The crew departed the station on November 23, 1983. Salyut 7 EO-2 Chronology
Bibliography and Further Reading
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