Salyut programme

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 19th of April 1971, the Soviet Union launched Salyut 1, the world's first crewed space station. Salyut is a Russian word that can mean either a salute or fireworks, and the name suited the occasion. But the festive label covered a programme with a double life. Behind a civilian research effort sat a secretive military one that flew under the very same name. Several questions run through this story. Why did engineers who had worked on hardware for the Moon turn to orbital laboratories instead? Why was the station almost called something else? And how did pieces of this Soviet hardware end up at the heart of the International Space Station?

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• 2. Rival Design Bureaus

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  In October 1964, Vladimir Chelomey's design bureau, NPO Mashinostroyeniya, also known as OKB-52, designed the cores of a military space station called Almaz-OPS. That was years before anyone spoke of Salyut. OPS stands for Orbital Piloted Station. The civilian counterpart was the DOS, or Durable Orbital Station, designed by Sergei Korolev's organisation, OKB-1. The two bureaus had been in fierce competition during the Soviet crewed lunar programme.

  Conceptual work beginning in August 1969 merged the two traditions. The Almaz-OPS hull was combined with subsystems derived from OKB-1's Soyuz spacecraft. The DOS stations differed from their military cousins in several ways, including extra solar panels. The OPS docking port also needed small modifications so that Soyuz spacecraft could dock there alongside the TKS spacecraft it was designed for.

  Two advantages made the civilian route attractive. The later DOS stations could serve as a cover story for the military Almaz programme. They could also be finished within one year, and at least a year earlier than Almaz.

  The Salyut programme began on the 15th of February 1970, on the condition that the crewed lunar programme would not suffer. Engineers at OKB-1 did not wait. They judged the L3 lunar lander effort a dead end and switched to DOS at once.

  Their judgment proved right. The Soviet N1 "Moon Shot" rocket never flew successfully. The time from the inception of the DOS station to the launch of Salyut 1 was only 16 months. That put the first space station in orbit two years before the American Skylab, and before the first Almaz-OPS station flew. The finished station was ready for the pad, but one detail remained unsettled: its name.

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• 3. Dawn Becomes Salute

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  Zarya, the Russian word for Dawn, was the name first planned for the stations. As the first launch was prepared, planners realised that it clashed with Zarya, the call sign of the Mission Control Center, known as TsUP, in Korolyov. The name was therefore changed to Salyut shortly before Salyut 1 flew.

  A second explanation looks toward China. Chinese engineers were purportedly preparing a new rocket for launch, and they had already named it Shuguang, which also means Dawn. The Soviet name might have offended them.

  Day-to-day management of the whole effort fell to Kerim Kerimov, chairman of the state commission for Soyuz missions.

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• 4. Nine Stations, Six Crews

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  Nine space stations were launched under the Salyut programme in total, and six of them hosted crews. The other three never held a crew. Two launches failed outright. The launch records list DOS-2, which went up on the 29th of July 1972 and reentered the same day. They also list Kosmos 557, designated DOS-3, launched on the 11th of May 1973 and reentered on the 22nd of May.

  The first generation of stations served as an engineering test bed. From the very beginning of the Almaz programme, the aim had been to build long-living, multi-modular stations. In practice, these early stations received few craft for rendezvous and docking.

  Salyut 1 came down on the 11th of October 1971, within the year of its launch. Salyut 4 lasted much longer. It was launched on the 26th of December 1974 and stayed in orbit until the 3rd of February 1977, just over two years.

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• 5. Military Stations

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  Salyut 2, the first military station, known as OPS-1, was launched on the 4th of April 1973. It reentered on the 28th of May 1973, and the records show no days of crew occupation aboard.

  Salyut 3, or OPS-2, launched on the 25th of June 1974 and reentered on the 24th of January 1975. It made history by conducting the first test-fire of a conventional weapon in space. Cosmonauts fired an onboard 23mm cannon, reported to be a modified Nudelman aircraft cannon. To aim it, the crew had to maneuver the entire station toward the target.

  Accounts of the firing differ. Some sources state that the cannon was fired to deplete the ammunition on the craft. Others say the station conducted 3 tests of the gun across the whole mission.

  Salyut 5, or OPS-3, launched on the 22nd of June 1976, and it was the last station of the Almaz programme to fly under the Salyut name. It came down on the 8th of August 1977, and the programme's attention turned to a new goal, continuous occupation.

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• 6. Permanent Occupation

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  Of the 1,697 days that all Salyut crews spent aboard, Salyut 6 and Salyut 7 accounted for 1,499. Salyut 6 launched on the 29th of September 1977 and Salyut 7 on the 19th of April 1982. Their time in orbit overlapped for a few months, because Salyut 6 did not reenter until the 29th of July 1982.

  The goal in 1977 was to keep a station continuously occupied, with long-duration expeditions, which had never been done before. The new stations resembled earlier Salyuts in overall design but had a longer design life. They also had a second docking port at the aft. Skylab had already featured a second port, but these were the first stations to put two ports to real use.

  Two crewed Soyuz spacecraft could now dock at the same time, which allowed crews to exchange and stations to be handed over. Progress, an uncrewed resupply craft built on the crewed Soyuz, completed the system. It carried air, air regenerators, water, food, clothing, bedding, mail, propellants, pressurant and other supplies. While Progress sat at the second port, the crew's Soyuz could stay at the first. Progress even delivered hardware to update onboard experiments and to repair the station, extending its life.

  Records fell along the way. Salyut flights broke several mission-duration records, achieved the first orbital handover of a station from one crew to another, and set spacewalk records. Salyut 7 would finally reenter on the 7th of February 1991, almost nine years after its launch.

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• 7. Docking Spheres

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  Four docking ports were the target for the next planned cores, DOS-7 and DOS-8. One port would sit at the aft, as on the second-generation stations. The front port would give way to a docking sphere with three ports: front, port and starboard. That arrangement would allow several modules to be attached to one core for the first time. Both cores were built and flown, but neither received the Salyut designation.

  DOS-7 kept developing during the Salyut 7 mission, and on the 19th of February 1986 it became the Mir Core Module. Mir was the first modular space station, with crewed operations from 1986-2000. The core had upgraded computers and solar arrays, plus a private cabin for each of two cosmonauts. Its docking sphere had been upgraded to hold up to five ports: front, port, starboard, zenith and nadir. With the aft port, that made six in all. The modules attached to it were derived from the Functional Cargo Block of the Almaz programme.

  The name Mir, meaning Peace or World, was meant to signify the Soviet Union's intention to bring peace to the world. The Mir Core Module alone accumulated 4,592 days of occupancy, far more than double the 1,697 days all Salyut crews achieved combined.

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• 8. From Mir to ISS

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  In December 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved, ending what the 1917 October Revolution had begun. The process started with Mikhail Gorbachev's reform campaigns of the 1980s, "perestroika and glasnost", meaning restructuring and openness. It reached a first endpoint with the revolutions of 1989 and the end of the communist Eastern Bloc, then finally reached the Soviet Union itself.

  The Russian Federation inherited much of the Soviet space programme, to be run by the Russian Federal Space Agency, but it faced severe difficulties. Imports and exports declined steeply as economic exchange with Comecon nations crumbled. Eastern European contributions ended, including those of the East German firm Carl Zeiss Jena. Parts of the space industry sat in newly independent Ukraine, which was as cash-strapped as Russia and began demanding hard currency.

  In 1993, the Shuttle-Mir program was established between the Russian Federation and the United States. Former adversaries now cooperated, and Phase One consisted of joint missions and flights of the Space Shuttle to Mir. Russia needed hard currency to keep its programme aloft. The United States saw a chance to learn from more than 20 years of Soviet space station experience. Phase Two of the program would lead to the International Space Station.

  DOS-8 evolved into the Mir-2 project, intended to replace Mir. It finally became the Zvezda Service Module, which formed the core of the early ISS together with the Zarya module. Zarya was derived from the Almaz Functional Cargo Block. That block grew out of the Almaz TKS spacecraft, and it also formed the basis of the experimental Polyus orbital weapons platform. Zvezda launched on the 12th of July 2000, and Zarya is still operating beside it, carrying the Almaz lineage in orbit.

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