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Soyuz program
The Soyuz ("Union") programme is a human
spaceflight programme that was initiated by the Soviet Union in the
early 1960´s. It was originally part of a Moon landing programme
intended to put a Soviet cosmonaut on the Moon. Both the Soyuz
spacecraft and the Soyuz rocket are part of this programme, which
is now the responsibility of the Russian Federal Space Agency.
The launch vehicles used in the Soyuz expendable
launch system are manufactured at the Progress State Research and
Production Rocket Space Center (TsSKB-Progress) in Samara, Russia.
As well as being used in the Soyuz programme as the launcher for
the manned Soyuz spacecraft, Soyuz launch vehicles are now also
used to launch unmanned Progress supply spacecraft to the
International Space Station and commercial launches marketed and
operated by TsSKB-Progress and the Starsem company. There were 11
Soyuz launches in 2001 and 9 in 2002. Currently Soyuz vehicles are
launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and the
Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwest Russia. Starting in 2010 Soyuz
launch vehicles will also be launched from the Guiana Space Centre
in French Guiana.
The basic Soyuz spacecraft design was the basis
for many projects, many of which never came to light. Its earliest
form was intended to travel to the moon without employing a huge
booster like the Saturn V or the Soviet N-1 by repeatedly docking
with upper stages that had been put in orbit using the same rocket
as the Soyuz. This and the initial civilian designs were done under
the Soviet Chief Designer Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, who did not
live to see the craft take flight. Several military derivatives
actually took precedence in the Soviet design process, though they
never came to pass.
A Soyuz spacecraft consists of three parts (from front to
back):
a spheroid orbital module
a small aerodynamic reentry module
a cylindrical service module with solar panels attached
There are several variants of the Soyuz spacecraft,
including:
Soyuz A 7K-9K-11K circumlunar complex proposal(1963)
Soyuz 7K-OK (1967-1971)
Soyuz 7K-L1 Zond (1967-1970)
Soyuz 7K-L3 LOK
Soyuz 7K-OKS (1971)
Soyuz 7K-T or "ferry" (1973-1981)
Soyuz 7K-TM (1975-1976)
Military Soyuz (7K-P, 7K-PPK, R, 7K-VI Zvezda, and OIS)
Soyuz-T (1976-1986)
Soyuz-TM (1986-2003)
Soyuz-TMA (2003-.... )
Soyuz-TMAT (2010/.... )
Soyuz-ACTS (2012/....)
The Zond spacecraft was another derivative,
designed to take a crew traveling in a figure-eight orbit around
the Earth and the moon but never achieving the degree of safety or
political need to be used for such.
Finally, the Progress series of unmanned cargo
ships for the Salyut and Mir space laboratories used the automatic
navigation and docking mechanism (but not the re-entry capsule) of
Soyuz.
As of 2007, Soyuz derivatives provide Russia´s
human spaceflight capability and are used to ferry personnel and
supplies to and from the International Space Station.
While not a direct derivative, the Chinese
Shenzhou spacecraft follows the basic template originally pioneered
by Soyuz.
Salyut program
The Salyut program was the first space station
program undertaken by the Soviet Union, which consisted of a series
of nine single-module space stations launched over a period of
eleven years from 1971 to 1982. Intended as a project to carry out
long-term research into the problems of living in space and a
variety of astronomical, biological and Earth-resources
experiments, the program allowed space station technology to evolve
from the engineering development stage to long-term research
outposts in space. Ultimately, experience gained from the Salyut
stations went on to pave the way for multimodular space stations
such as Mir and the International Space Station, with each of those
stations possessing a Salyut-derived core module at its heart.
The program consisted of a series of six
scientific research stations and three military reconnaissance
stations, the latter being launched as part of the highly secretive
Almaz program. Salyut broke several spaceflight records, including
several mission duration records, the first ever orbital handover
of a space station from one crew to another, and various spacewalk
records. By the time the program concluded, in 1991, it had seen
space station technology evolve from basic, single-docking port
stations to complex, multi-ported orbital outposts with impressive
scientific capabilities, whose technological legacy continues to
the present day.
A model of a Salyut 7 space station, with a Soyuz spacecraft and a
Progress resupply spacecraft docked at each end. The display is in
front of one of the pavilions of the Exhibition of Soviet National
Economic
Development of the Soviet/Russian space stations
and derivatives. Light gray arrows trace the evolution of space
stations and satellites derived from space station hardware. Dark
gray arrows trace the influence of concepts on later flown
hardware. Solid black arrows indicate modules joined to Mir, while
dashed black arrows stand for modules to be added to Mir in the
near future. These arrows lead from the Station Modules and
The program was composed of DOS (Durable Orbital
Station) civilian stations and OPS (Orbital Piloted Station)
military stations. All were adapted from Vladimir Chelomei´s
original Almaz OPS spaceframe. For the military Orbital Piloted
Stations modifications were small, and related to the rear docking
port for Soyuz spacecraft. For the civilian DOS Orbital Space
Station changes were great, with extra solar panels, rear and front
docking ports for Soyuz spacecraft, TKS spacecraft and modules.
Salyut 1 (DOS-1) (Russian:
Салют-1; English: Salute 1) was
launched April 19, 1971. It was the first space station to orbit
Earth. Its first crew launched in Soyuz 10 but were unable to board
it due to a failure in the docking mechanism; its second crew
launched in Soyuz 11 and remained on board for 23 productive days.
A pressure-equalization valve in the Soyuz 11 reentry capsule
opened prematurely when the crew returned to Earth, killing all
three. Salyut 1 reentered Earth´s atmosphere October 11, 1971.
DOS-2 was launched on July 29, 1972. It was
similar in design to Salyut The second stage of its Proton rocket
failed, which meant that it never reached orbit. It crashed into
the Pacific Ocean.
Salyut 2 (OPS-1) was launched April 4, 1973. It
was not really a part of the same program as the other Salyut
stations, instead being the highly classified prototype military
space station Almaz. It was given the designation Salyut 2 to
conceal its true nature. Despite its successful launch, within two
days the as-yet-unmanned Salyut 2 began losing pressure and its
flight control failed; the cause of the failure was likely due to
shrapnel piercing the station when the discarded Proton rocket
upper stage that had placed it in orbit later exploded nearby. On
April 11, 1973, 11 days after launch, an unexplainable accident
caused four solar panels to be torn loose from the space station
cutting off all power to the space station. Salyut 2 re-entered on
May 28, 1973.
The Salyut space station that Almaz had
substituted for, designated DOS-3, was launched on May 11, 1973,
three days before the launch of Skylab. Due to errors in the flight
control system while out of the range of ground control, the
station fired its orbit-correction engines until it consumed all of
its fuel. Since the spacecraft was already in orbit and had been
registered by Western radar, the Soviets disguised the launch as
"Cosmos 557" and quietly allowed it to re-enter Earth´s atmosphere
and burn up a week later. It was revealed to have been a Salyut
station only much later.
Salyut 3 (OPS-2) was launched on June 25, 1974.
It was another Almaz military space station, this one launched
successfully. It tested a wide variety of reconnaissance sensors,
returning a canister of film for analysis. On January 24, 1975,
after the station had been ordered to deorbit, trials of the
on-board 23 mm Nudelman aircraft cannon (other sources say it was a
Nudelman NR-30 30 mm gun) were conducted with positive results at
ranges from 3000 m to 500 m. Cosmonauts have confirmed that a
target satellite was destroyed in the test. The next day, the
station was ordered to deorbit. Only one of the three intended
crews successfully boarded and crewed the station, brought by Soyuz
14; Soyuz 15 attempted to bring a second crew but failed to dock.
Nevertheless, it was an overall success. The station´s orbit
decayed, and it re-entered the atmosphere on January 24, 1975.
Salyut 4 (DOS-4) was launched on December 26,
1974. It was essentially a copy of the DOS-3, and unlike its
ill-fated sibling it was a complete success. Two crews made stays
aboard Salyut 4 (Soyuz 17 and Soyuz 18), including one of 63 days
duration, and an unmanned Soyuz capsule (Soyuz 20) remained docked
to the station for three months, proving the systems´ long-term
durability. Salyut 4 was deorbited February 2, 1977, and re-entered
the Earth´s atmosphere on February 3.
Salyut 5 (OPS-3) (Russian:
Салют-5; English translation Salute
5) was launched on June 22, 1976. It was the third and last Almaz
military space station. Its launch and subsequent mission were both
completed successfully, with three crews launching and two (Soyuz
21 and Soyuz 24) successfully boarding the craft for lengthy stays
(the second crew on Soyuz 23 was unable to dock and had to abort).
Salyut 5 reentered on August 8, 1977. Following Salyut 5 the Soviet
Military decided that the tactical advantages were not worth the
expense of the program and withdrew. The focus for the later
missions was research and prestige.
Salyut 6 (DOS-5) was launched on September 29,
1977. Although it resembled the previous Salyut stations in overall
design, it featured several revolutionary advances including a
second docking port where an unmanned Progress cargo spacecraft
could dock and refuel the station. From 1977 until 1982 Salyut 6
was visited by five long-duration crews and 11 short-term crews,
including cosmonauts from Warsaw Pact countries. Some unconfirmed
reports say the station was functionally capable of even more
missions and years, but combating the ever-increasing mold in
living quarters was becoming impossible, and in practice caused the
retirement decision. The very first long-duration crew on Salyut 6
broke a record set on board Skylab, staying 96 days in orbit. The
longest flight on board Salyut 6 lasted 185 days. The fourth Salyut
6 expedition deployed a 10-meter radio-telescope antenna delivered
by a cargo ship. After Salyut 6 manned operations were discontinued
in 1981, a heavy unmanned spacecraft called TKS and developed using
hardware left from the canceled Almaz program was docked to the
station as a hardware test. Salyut 6 was deorbited July 29,
1982.
Salyut 7 (DOS-6) was launched on April 19, 1982.
It was the back-up vehicle for Salyut 6 and very similar in
equipment and capabilities, though several more advanced features
were included. It was aloft for four years and two months, during
which time it was visited by 10 crews constituting 6 main
expeditions and 4 secondary flights (including French and Indian
cosmonauts). Aside from the many experiments and observations made
on Salyut 7, the station also tested the docking and use of large
modules with an orbiting space station. The modules were called
"Heavy Cosmos modules." They helped engineers develop technology
necessary to build Mir. Salyut 7 deorbited on February 7, 1991.
It was planned that two other stations (DOS-7
and DOS-8) would follow. These would be equipped with a total of
four docking ports; two at either end of the station and an
additional two ports on either side of docking sphere at the front
of the station. DOS-7 continued to be developed, becoming the Mir
Core Module, featuring upgraded computers and solar arrays,
accommodations for two cosmonauts each having their own cabin and
six docking ports.
DOS-8 evolved into the Mir-2 project, intended
to replace the Mir space station. Finally, it became the
International Space Station Zvezda Service Module.
Soyuz 11
Soyuz 11 was the first successful visit to the
world´s first space station, Salyut 1. The mission ended in
disaster when the crew capsule depressurised during preparations
for re-entry, killing the three-man crew.[5] This accident resulted
in the only human deaths to occur in space (as opposed to high
atmosphere). The crew members aboard Soyuz 11 were Vladislav
Volkov, Georgi Dobrovolski and Viktor Patsayev.
CrewPosition Cosmonaut
Commander Georgi Dobrovolski
First spaceflight
Flight Engineer Vladislav Volkov
Second spaceflight
Test Engineer Viktor Patsayev
First spaceflight
Backup crewPosition Cosmonaut
Commander Aleksei Gubarev
Flight Engineer Vitali Sevastyanov
Test Engineer Anatoli Voronov
Original crewPosition Cosmonaut
Commander Alexei Leonov
Flight Engineer Valeri Kubasov
Test Engineer Pyotr Kolodin
The original prime crew for Soyuz 11 consisted
of Alexei Leonov, Valeri Kubasov and Pyotr Kolodin. A medical X-ray
examination four days before launch suggested that Kubasov might
have tuberculosis, and according to the mission rules, the prime
crew was replaced with the back-up crew. For Dobrovolski and
Patsayev, this was to be their first space mission. After the
failure of Salyut 2 to orbit, Kubasov and Leonov were reassigned to
Soyuz 19 for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975.
Mission parameters
Mass: 6,790 kg (15,000 lb)
Perigee: 163 km (101 mi)
Apogee: 237 km (147 mi)
Inclination: 51.5°
Period: 88.4 min
The Soyuz spacecraft was launched on June 7,
1971, from Baikonur Cosmodrome in central Kazakh SSR. Several
months earlier, the first mission to the Salyut, Soyuz 10, had
failed to successfully dock with the station. Soyuz 11, however,
successfully docked with Salyut 1 on June 7 and the cosmonauts
remained on-board for 22 days, setting space endurance records that
would hold until the American Skylab 2 mission in May-June
1973.
Upon first entering the station, the crew
encountered a smokey and burnt atmosphere and after replacing part
of the ventilation system spent the next day back in their Soyuz
until the air cleared. Their stay in Salyut was productive,
including live television broadcasts. However, a fire broke out on
day 11 of their stay causing mission planners to consider
abandoning the station. The planned highlight of the mission was to
have been the observation of an N-1 booster launch, but the launch
was postponed. The crew also found that using the exercise
treadmill as they were required to do twice a day caused the whole
station to vibrate. Pravda released news of the mission and regular
updates while it was in progress.
On June 30, 1971, after an apparently normal
re-entry of the capsule of the Soyuz 11 mission, the recovery team
opened the capsule to find the crew dead. It quickly became
apparent that they had been asphyxiated. The fault was traced to a
breathing ventilation valve, located between the orbital module and
the descent module, that had been jolted open as the descent module
separated from the service module, 723 seconds after retrofire. The
two were held together by explosive bolts designed to fire
sequentially; in fact, they fired simultaneously. The force of this
caused the internal mechanism of the pressure equalization valve to
loosen a seal that was usually discarded later and normally allowed
automatic adjustment of the cabin pressure. The valve opened at an
altitude of 168 kilometers (104 mi), and the gradual loss of
pressure was fatal within seconds. The valve was located beneath
the seats and was impossible to locate and block before the air was
lost. Flight recorder data from the single cosmonaut outfitted with
biomedical sensors showed cardiac arrest occurred within 40 seconds
of pressure loss. By 935 seconds after the retrofire, the cabin
pressure was zero, and remained there until the capsule hit the
Earth´s atmosphere.
Film later declassified showed support crews
attempting CPR on the cosmonauts. It was not known until an autopsy
that they had died because of a capsule depressurization. The
ground crew had lost audio contact with the crew before re-entry
began and had already begun preparations for contingencies in case
the crew had been lost.
The cosmonauts were given a large state funeral
and buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis at Red Square, Moscow
near the remains of Yuri Gagarin. U.S. astronaut Tom Stafford was
one of the pallbearers. They were also each posthumously awarded
the Hero of the Soviet Union medal. Craters on the Moon were named
after the three cosmonauts.
The Soyuz 11 landing coordinates are 47.35663°N
70.12142°E which is 90 km South West of Karazhal, Karagandy,
Kazakhstan and about 550 km North East of Baikonur. At the site is
a memorial monument in the form of a three-sided metallic column.
Near the top of the column, on each of the three sides, is the
engraved image of the face of each crew member set into a stylized
triangle. The memorial is in open, flat country, far from any
populated area. It is within a small, circular, fenced area.
The Soyuz spacecraft was extensively redesigned
after this incident to carry only two cosmonauts. The extra room
meant that the crew could wear space suits during launch and
landing. A Soyuz capsule would not hold three crew members again
until the Soyuz-T redesign in 1980, which freed enough space for
three people in lightweight pressure suits to travel in the
capsule.
Salyut 1
Salyut 1 (DOS-1) was the first space station of
any kind, launched by the USSR on April 19, 1971. It was launched
unmanned using a Proton-K rocket. Its first crew came later in
Soyuz 10, but was unable to dock completely; its second crew
launched in Soyuz 11 and remained on board for 23 days. However, a
pressure-equalization valve in the Soyuz 11 reentry capsule opened
prematurely when the crew was returning, killing all three.
Following the accident, missions were temporarily suspended and the
station was burned in the atmosphere purposely after a total of 6
months in orbit.
At launch, the announced purpose of Salyut was
to test the elements of the systems of a space station and to
conduct scientific research and experiments. The craft was
described as being 20 m in length, 4 m in maximum diameter, and 99
m in interior space with an on-orbit dry mass of 18,425 kg. Of its
several compartments, three were pressurized (100 m? total), and
two could be entered by the crew.
The transfer compartment was to connect directly
with Soyuz. The docking cone had a 2 m front diameter and a 3 m aft
diameter.
The second, and main, compartment was about 4 m
in diameter. Televised views showed enough space for eight big
chairs (seven at work consoles), several control panels, and 20
portholes (some obstructed by instruments).
The third pressurized compartment contained the
control and communications equipment, the power supply, the life
support system, and other auxiliary equipment. The fourth, and
final, unpressurized compartment was about 2 m in diameter and
contained the engine installations and associated control
equipment. Salyut had buffer chemical batteries, reserve supplies
of oxygen and water, and regeneration systems. Externally mounted
were two double sets of solar cell panels that extended like wings
from the smaller compartments at each end, the heat regulation
system´s radiators, and orientation and control devices.
Salyut 1 was modified from one of the Almaz
airframes. The unpressurized service module was the modified
service module of a Soyuz craft.
The astrophysical Orion 1 Space Observatory
designed by Grigor Gurzadyan of Byurakan Observatory in Armenia,
was installed in Salyut 1. Ultraviolet spectrograms of stars were
obtained with the help of a mirror telescope of the Mersenne system
and a spectrograph of the Wadsworth system using film sensitive to
the far ultraviolet. The dispersion of the spectrograph was 32 A/mm
(3.2 nm/mm), while the resolution of the spectrograms derived was
about 5 A at 2600 A (0.5 nm at 260 nm). Slitless spectrograms were
obtained of the stars Vega and Beta Centauri between 2000 and 3800
A (200 and 380 nm). The telescope was operated by crew member
Viktor Patsayev, who became the first man to operate a telescope
outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
Specifications
Length - 15.8 m
Maximum diameter - 4.15 m
Habitable volume - 90 m?
Mass at launch - 18,900 kg
Launch vehicle - Proton (three-stage)
Span across solar arrays - about 10 m
Area of solar arrays - 28 m?
Number of solar arrays - 4
Resupply carriers - Salyut 1-type Soyuz
Number of docking ports - 1
Total manned missions - 2
Total long-duration manned missions - 1
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