Soviet salyut program price

How would the Russians respond to such a provocative act as capturing a space station? The man in charge at the Kremlin at the time was year old Konstantin Chernenko.

With no strong hand at the helm in Moscow, the chances of the Soviet Union responding to the capture of Salyut-7 with a nuclear strike looked slim.

It was a gamble America was willing to take. With little time to prepare for the mission, NASA went on the lookout for a crewmember who had hands-on experience with Salyut The assignment of the French astronauts raised suspicion about the true purpose of the Challenger flight in the Soviet military intelligence service, which duly informed Defense Minister Sergei Sokolov of its concerns on February Shortly afterwards, a meeting of government and space program officials decided to launch a rescue mission to Salyut-7 as soon as possible, before the Americans could lay their hands on the station.

The Soviet Union was working on its equivalent of the shuttle, Buran, but the vehicle was at least several years away from its maiden flight and could not be readied in time to save Salyut So the decision was made to fly a rescue mission on a Soyuz spacecraft and entrust the job to two experienced cosmonauts: Vladimir Dzhanibekov, a veteran of four short-duration missions to Salyut-6 and Salyut-7, and Viktor Savinykh, who had accumulated 75 days of spaceflight experience aboard Salyut-6 in and had been slated to fly to Salyut-7 in March as part of the next long-stay crew.

However, there was no way the rescue mission could be readied before NASA made its first attempt to launch Challenger to Salyut On March 10, the mission was ready to go. But then, with just hours to go in the countdown, news arrived from Moscow that the ailing Chernenko had passed away earlier that day.

Officially, the launch was scrubbed for technical reasons. Still, hopes of capturing the Soviet space station were not abandoned. Challenger was loaded with a Spacelab module and launched with a different crew on April 29, , to make a close rendezvous with the unmanned Salyut-7, allowing the crew to make a close-up photographic inspection of the station ahead of the capture mission, now rescheduled for a Discovery mission in June.

Moreover, returning from orbit with the Spacelab module in the cargo bay was a good simulation of returning a heavy object to Earth. In the end, the Russians beat the US to the launch pad. After finishing preparations for their rescue mission, cosmonauts Dzhanibekov and Savinykh were launched on June 6 aboard Soyuz T and, using newly developed laser range-finding techniques, managed to dock their vehicle with the crippled Salyut-7 two days later.

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Used: An item that has been used previously. Pavel Popovich left and engineer Yuri Artyukhin right are pictured before entering their Soyuz spacecraft prior to launch, on July 3, A successor to Salyut 1 had been in the works for some years.

After two failed launches in and , another station — Salyut 4 — finally reached orbit in December Salyut 4 was little more than a slight upgrade to Salyut 1's design. It was fitted with a variety of telescopes : one pointed at the sun and two others watching the universe for X-rays. And it held a little garden for cosmonauts to grow peas and onions in space.

Two different crewed missions visited Salyut 4. Soyuz 17 docked in January with cosmonauts Aleksei Gubarev and Georgy Grechko, who stayed for about a month. By the end of its lifetime, the station was becoming uninhabitable: its life support was failing and its walls were coated with mold.

Regardless, Salyut 4 stayed in orbit until The third and last of the Almaz launches, the station named Salyut 5 entered orbit in June Compared to Salyuts 2 and 3, it proved only somewhat longer-lasting. The Soyuz 21 crew, cosmonauts Boris Volynov and Vitaly Zholobov, were Salyut 5's first visitors and had to leave early when a fuel leak contaminated the station's air during their July mission. Next came Soyuz 23, a mission carrying cosmonauts Vyacheslav Zudov and Valery Rozhdestvensky to Salyut 5 in October , but that mission was cut short after failing to dock, and the crew went straight back to Earth.

Finally, in February , came the Soyuz 24 crew — cosmonauts Viktor Gorbatko and Yuri Glazkov — who managed to vent the station's air and freshen it up before entering and staying for a few weeks. The station's plans called for a fourth mission, but by mid, the station had already begun to run low on necessary fuel. It was deorbited that August. Here: Soyuz 24 Cmdr.

Viktor Gorbatko left and flight engineer Yuri Glazkov wave goodbye prior to their flight to the Salyut 5 space station, on Feb. The Soviet space station program really began to hit its stride with Salyut 6.

In many ways, Salyut 6 was the first truly long-lasting space station. Launched in September , Salyut 6 welcomed dozens of cosmonauts during its five-year lifetime.