Oct 10 1983
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(New page: Tass said that Venera 15, launched June 2, had reached Venus October 10 and fired its engine to assume an elongated elliptical orbit around the planet with a 24-hour period of revolution. ...)
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Tass said that Venera 15, launched June 2, had reached Venus October 10 and fired its engine to assume an elongated elliptical orbit around the planet with a 24-hour period of revolution. Venera 16, still on its way, was scheduled to arrive about October 14. (FBIS, Tass in English, Oct 10/83)
October 10-27: FBIS carried a report from Paris quoting "a source close to Soviet space circles" that three Soviet cosmonauts, one a woman, were injured when a rocket blew up at Baykonur two weeks ago. The crew was ejected from the launcher by a secondary rocket, the source said. (FBIS, Paris AF in English, Oct 10/83)
The New York Times said that Soviet officials had "privately admitted" that one of their rockets exploded on the launch pad as three cosmonauts prepared to join the crew on orbiting space station Salyut 7. However, "in the absence of any public accounting of the incident," questions remained as to the damage done to the Soviet Union's space program or its effect on the mission of the crew now in their fourth month aboard Salyut 7.
The private sources said that the 160-foot A-2 rocket began to topple on the launch pad before its liquid oxygen and kerosene fuel exploded. The accounts were contradictory, some saying that a woman was in the crew and others that the crew was either injured or merely shaken up by the experience. The explosion could amount to a major setback, in view of a Soyuz crew's failure to dock with the Salyut last April at the end of a "harrowing 17-hour struggle." The Washington Post said that the crew sustained "unspecified injuries" and that the event was important because the visitors to the Salyut would have returned to Earth in the capsule that took occupants Aleksandr Aleksandrov and Vladimir Lyakhov to the station June 28, leaving their module for the "permanent crew" to use on their return. No immediate concern was expressed about the latter, as the original capsule was still usable.
A later report noted that Aleksandrov and Lyakhov had been endangered September 9 by a leak of nitrogen tetroxide propellant into space; the cosmonauts had put on their space suits in case the toxic gas entered the cabin. They were allowed to remain in orbit after they found no traces of the gas. But the leak had left 16 of the station's 32 control jets unusable, and less than 1,000 pounds of the gas in its single operating tank, meaning that a new crew could not operate the station in a normal mode. A new crew could fly a different type of space tug to one of the docking ports, however, and use its control jets to maneuver the station.
The New York Times reported October 18 that a Soviet official with direct contact to senior mission control that said two experienced cosmonauts were recuperating from effects of acceleration when emergency rockets blew their capsule clear of the exploding A-2 launch vehicle and that the crew did not include a woman.
The Washington Post said October 20 that the two cosmonauts on Salyut 7 were "in no danger," according to Eugeny Tabakaaev of the Soviet academy of sciences; the statement followed a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report that the station was crippled because of a propellant leak. British teacher Geoffrey Perry, a regular listener to Soviet radio transmissions, told AP that he had detected no signs of stress and that the cosmonauts "sound fine" James Oberg, U.S. specialist on Soviet space programs, said that the Salyut 7 crew could get back to Earth in the Soyuz That took them into space, but the Soviet Union had not used the Soyuz craft after 115 to 120 days in space because batteries and other systems could deteriorate over time. Oberg said that Lyakhov and Aleksandrov were to have returned late in September after another crew arrived but were delayed by the launch-pad explosion.
The Soviet Union launched a supply ship, Progress 18, from Baykonur at 4:59 a.m. EDT October 20 to rendezvous with Salyut 7, claiming that the cosmonauts there were "living normally." Lyakhov and Aleksandrov appeared on Moscow television October 16 and appeared to be "in high spirits" However, their flight had reached its 116th day October 21, and the previous record for a stay in space was the 114 days set last year in the course of a 211-day endurance flight. It would take 10 days to 2 weeks for the cosmonauts to unload Progress 18, which would be burned on reentry.
Nature magazine, published in Great Britain, said that the crisis was exaggerated and concern for the crew came not from Soviet engineers but from physicians, who had seen significant declines in activity and efficiency after four months in space. Nature described as "fanciful" a suggestion that the Soviet Union wanted to keep the cosmonauts in orbit until they could be rescued by the U.S. Shuttle on its November flight. (FBIS, Paris AFP in English, Oct 10/83; Tass in English, Oct 14, 20, 21, 22, 28/83; NY Times, Oct 12/83,. A7; Oct 18/83, C-2; W Post, Oct 12/83, A-19; Oct 14/83, A-10; Oct 20/83, A-39; Oct 21/83, A-7; Nature, Oct 27/83, 756)
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