July 1979
From The Space Library
Aviation Week & Space Technology noted a record number of USSR spacecraft launches in the first six months of 1979 compared to the past year: 49 launches through June, compared with a previous record of 45 in the first half of 1978. The record year for Soviet launches, 1976, had seen 99 launches; the 1978 total was 88. (Av Wk, July 9/79, 11)
FBIS carried almost daily reports on Salyut 6 cosmonauts Valery Ryumin and Vladimir Lyakhov, from unloading Progress 7 beginning July 2 to performance of new metal-combination experiments on the newly installed Kristall furnace at month's end. Noting that the current crew had broken the previous record of 140 days in space on or about July 14, the Washington Post picked up a Tass report that Valery Ryumin had achieved another space first: he had added a "svelte" 1.5 pounds, first weight gain in orbit. The Soviet press attributed the gain to "space meals" like those on Earth, including about 70 items, meat and diary products, confectionery, fruits, juices and spices." A July 16 story said that the new spaceflight record was "double the overall duration of manned expeditions aboard American Skylab." Unfolding a 30-footwide radiotelescope antenna made of fine wire petals and pushing it into space was done by July 20, when Progress 7 undocked for reentry. (FBIS, Tass in English, July 2-30/79; W Post, July 15/79, A-14; Av Wk, July 9/79, 20; July 16/79, 23)
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