Apr 19 1982
From The Space Library
The Soviet news agency Tass reported that the Soviet Union had launched space station Salyut 7 apparently to replace Salyut 6, home in space for cosmonauts since September 1977, for a joint French-Soviet manned flight this summer. Orbital parameters were 278-kilometer apogee, 219-kilometer perigee (between 136 and 172 miles), 89.2 minute period, 51.5 ° inclination. Agence France-Presse said that a Soviet-French team would shortly be launched in a Soyuz-T craft to link up with Salyut 7 Lt. Col. Jean-Loup Chretien, France's "spacecraft" who had had "intensive training in Soviet facilities" with his backup, Col. Patrick Baudry, would fly to Salyut 7 with two Soviet cosmonauts about June 22. The report said that the French preferred the neutral word spacenaut because the Soviets used "cosmonaut" and the Americans "astronaut" (FBIS, Tass Intl Svc in Russian, Apr 19/82; Paris AFP in English, Apr 20/82; W Post, Apr 20/82, A-18)
The New York Times reporter in Moscow said that the French-Soviet mission would be the first launch of a noncommunist in a Soviet spacecraft and the first East West spaceflight since Apollo-Soyuz in 1975. Flight commander Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Aleksandr Ivanchenkov would occupy Salyut 7 a few days earlier. An three-man crew on another spacecraft-two cosmonauts, Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyev, and Jean-Loup Chretien-would join them. The Soviet Union had released few details on the mission.
The USSR's goal was said to be deployment of a 12-man station weighing more than 100 tons, permanently occupied by rotating crews. Salyut 6's lifetime had included two "marathon missions" of 185 and 175 days; the U.S. record was 84 days during the Skylab program of 1973 and 1974. Soon after the last mission on Salyut 6 the Soviet Union had sent a large craft (Cosmos 1267) to link with it and test "methods of assembly of orbital complexes of great size and weight." No one said what would become of the Salyut-Cosmos; Western observers believed that the assembly, even with a combined weight of 36 tons could safely burn up on reentry. The U.S. Skylab that scattered debris on western Australia in 1979 during its uncontrolled plunge to Earth had weighed 77.5 tons. (FBIS Moscow Tass Intl Svc in Russian, Apr 19/83; NY Times, Apr 21/82, A-12)
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