Nov 23 1983
From The Space Library
Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Lyakhov and Aleksandr Aleksandrov returned to Earth aboard the Soyuz T-9 descent module after a 150-day flight on board the Salyut-7-Soyuz orbital space station. The two landed at 3:00 p.m. EST (in the middle of the night in the Soviet Union), 16 kilometers east of Dzhezkazgan in that country. U.S. intelligence sources said that the two were expected to return in September, when an exchange crew of cosmonauts was due to visit them. However, they were forced to stay in orbit an additional six weeks when an explosion at the launch pad almost killed the two other crewmen. And at about the same time that the launch pad accident forced the extension of their flight, the two cosmonauts had to deal with a fuel leak aboard the Salyut that left the space station with less than half of its normal navigating propellant. The two men had to live in space suits, because the fuel that leaked was nitrogen tetroxide, which was so toxic it might have killed them if it penetrated the cabin of the space station.
Western space observers had noted that the six week extension in space might cripple the Soyuz T-9 spacecraft because it had been in orbit longer than 115 days and this length of time could possibly cause its nonrechargeable batteries to burn out, allowing the corrosive nitrogen textroxide fuel the Soyuz used to navigate to eat through engine valves and jeopardize the flight home. Western space experts were also interested in the night landing. The cosmonauts, earliest day landing would have been December 15, which might have been too long for them to trust the Soyuz T-9 to return safely.
The official Soviet news agency Tass said that, during the flight, the crew carried out a large volume of scientific-technical and medicobiological research and experiments and gathered data on the Earth's natural resources, its atmosphere, seasonal changes, and the biological productivity of the world's oceans. New research was carried out under the program of material studies in space. An Elektrotropgraf instrument on board the station provided data on the state of construction materials following exposure to open space. Tass also noted that an important part of the crew's flight program was to carry out complex assembly work on the external surface of the Salyut 7 station. During two space walks of 5 hours and 45 minutes, the two cosmonauts in-stalled additional solar batteries on the station, in addition to other construction tasks. Over the course of the flight, there were regular medical checkups of the crew, which confirmed the possibility of man's active functioning in weightlessness. (FBIS Moscow Pravda in Russian, Nov 25/83; NY Times, Nov 3/83, A-8; W Post, Nov 12/83, A-2, Nov 24/83, A-12)
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