During the early 1970’s, the Space Race was
in full swing. The Americans had landed a man on the moon during 1969, and the
Soviets were reeling from the loss of their lead in the race to conquer space.
Having heard of the American Skylab space station programme, and having lost
the race to the moon, their focus shifted towards manned orbital space
stations.
So in early 1970, construction began on
Salyut 1 (Russian for ‘Salute’ (naturally) or ‘fireworks’). Its purpose was
merely to test the elements of a space station, and its basic design would be
built upon for decades to come. As an initial test station, it was not large –
20m in length, 4m in diameter with about 99 cubic metres of interior space. It
had only three pressurized compartments, of which two could be entered by the
crew.
The first of these compartments was the
transfer compartment – a docking port, essentially, allowing one Soyuz
spacecraft to dock. Its docking system is still in use today on the
International Space Station. The second and main compartment was the main
compartment, with enough space for eight chairs, several control panels, and
about 20 portholes. The third pressurized compartment contained its control and
communication equipment, power and life support systems. An unpressurized four
compartment contained engines, batteries and reserve supplies of oxygen and
water. Also attached to the Salyut 1 was the astrophysical Orion 1 Space
Observatory. This ultraviolet telescope took spectrograms of the stars Vega and
Beta Centauri during its operation.
Its launch was initially planned for 12
April 1971 to coincide with the 10 year anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight on
Vostok 1, but launch was delayed until the 19th. Its first crew
would launch with the Soyuz 10 mission, but they experienced problems with
docking, and could not enter the station. The Soyuz 10 mission was aborted and
a replacement crew was launched in Soyuz 11.
On 7 June 1971, 47 years ago today, the
crew of the Soyuz 11 successfully docked, and became the first men to man a
space station. Commander Georgy Dobrovsky, Flight Engineer Vladislav Volkov,
and Test Engineer Viktor Patsayev remained on board for 23 days, setting space
endurance records that would hold until the American Skylab mission.
When they first entered the station, they
encountered a smoky and burnt atmosphere, and had to replace a part of the
ventilation system and retreat to the Soyuz until the air cleared. The crew
continued with their mission, checking the design and systems of the orbital
station, testing the procedures for orientation and navigation as well as the
associated control systems.
In orbit, they also studied the Earth’s
surface in terms of geology, geography, meteorology and snow and ice cover,
while studying phenomena in the atmosphere and conducting medico-biological
studies on the effects and influence on long-term spaceflight on humans.
Interestingly, they found that using the exercise treadmill as they were
required to do twice a day caused the whole station to vibrate! During the course
of the mission, Victor Patsayev also became the first man to operate a
telescope outside of Eareth’s atmosphere, when he operated the Orion 1 Space
Observatory.
On 18 June, an electrical fire broke out on
the station, and mission planners considered abandoning the station. Finally,
on 29 June, after flying 362 orbits around the Earth, the crew was ordered to
return to Earth. They re-entered Soyuz 11, and started re-entry. Their capsule
parachuted to a soft landing in Kazakhstan, and all seemed well for their
mission.
When the recovery team found the capsule,
however, they realized something went wrong. Kerim Kerimov recalled, “Outwardly,
there was no damage whatsoever. They knocked on the side, but there was no
response from within. On opening the hatch, they found all three men in their
couches, motionless, with dark-blue patches on their faces and trails of blood
from their noses and ears. They removed them from the descent module.
Dobrovolsky was still warm. The doctors gave artificial respiration. Based on
their reports, the cause of death was suffocation.”
The fault was traced to a ventilation valve
located between the orbital and descent module, which had incorrectly opened
about 12 minutes after the start of their descent. Opened at an altitude of 168km,
the loss of pressure was fatal within seconds. Biomedical sensors show cardiac
arrest had occurred within 40 seconds of pressure loss. The Soyuz 11 crew had
become the first, and to date only, humans to die in space.
As a result, the Soyuz capsules were
redesigned to allow crew to wear pressure suits, and due to the time it took to
redesign, Salyut 1 was deorbited on October 11 without ever receiving another
crew. The world’s first space station burned up over the Pacific Ocean after
175 days in space. The Salyut programme continued, however, with Salyut-7 being
more commonly known as the Mir Space Station, and it’s final module, Salyut-8
known as Zvezda, the core of the Russian segment of the International Space
Station.
For the crew of the Soyuz 11, the world of
Richard Nixon put it best: “The American people join in expressing to you and
the Soviet people our deepest sympathy on the tragic deaths of the three Soviet
cosmonauts. The whole world followed the exploits of these courageous explorers
of the unknown and shares the anguish of their tragedy. But the achievements of
cosmonauts Dobrovolsky, Volkov and Patsayev remain. It will, I am sure, prove
to have contributed greatly to the further achievements of the Soviet program
for the exploration of space and thus to the widening of man's horizons.” On
August 1, 1971, their names joined 8 Americans and three other Soviets who lost
their lives in furtherance of space exploration on the Fallen Astronaut
Memorial placed on the moon by David Scott.
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