Feb 3 1977
From The Space Library
Tass reported that Soviet space station Salyut 4 , launched Dec. 26, 1974, to house cosmonauts working in space up to 90 days, disintegrated over the Pacific Ocean when it moved on ground command into "a descent trajectory" and burned up. Tass noted that the station had flown for 3mo joined to the unpiloted space capsule Soyuz-20. The longest, most successful career of a Salyut in the 16yr-old USSR space program had included what Tass called "an extensive program of medical and biological research" as well as study of the sun, stars, and planets in the electromagnetic spectrum; views of Soviet territory in the middle and southern latitudes; and a great amount of data on physical processes in earth atmosphere and in space.
Cosmonauts Georgy Grechko and Aleksey Gubarev had docked Soyuz 17 with Salyut 4 for 29 days between Jan. 10 and Feb. 9, 1975; Vasily Lazarev and Oleg Makarov failed to dock with Salyut 4 on Apr. 5 of that yr; and Pyotr Klimuk and Vitaly Sevastyanov had docked Soyuz 18 with Salyut 4 May 25 and remained for 63 days, during which they talked with their compatriots on the ASTP mission and returned July 24 with the Soviet duration record for a manned mission. Salyut 4 had completed 12,188 orbits around the earth before being destroyed, Tass said. (Today, Feb 4/77, 10A; FBIS, Dom Svc Rusn, Feb 3/77)
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