25 June 2024 marks half a century since the launch of the Salyut-3 (Almaz-2) station, designed at the Central Design Bureau of Mechanical Engineering (CDBM) under the leadership of Academician Vladimir Chelomey. What problems had to face the first manned expedition to the military “outpost”, as three deadly manoeuvres of the system “Igla” almost killed the second crew and why the Soviet specialists fired shells from the station right before its deorbiting, in the article of our colleagues from Pro Kosmos.

The accident of the first Almaz

Speaking of “Salyut-3”, we can not fail to mention the tragic history of the previous station, which was one of the first regrettable experiences of collision with “space debris”.

Preparations for the launch of the first military-applied manned orbital station Almaz series (No. 101-1) at Baikonur technical position, which began in January 1973, lasted three months. But just before the launch, the firm developing the transport ship – the Central Design Bureau of Experimental Machine Building (TsKBEM) – reported that the launch of the Soyuz with a crew had been delayed by a month “for technical reasons.” The flight programme had to be urgently revised, increasing the time of the station’s autonomous operation before the crew arrived from 10 to 37 days.

On April 3, 1973, the Proton-K launch vehicle put the first Almaz into the designed orbit, after which the autonomous flight began, the programme of the first 12 days of which Salyut-2 (the station received this open designation) fulfilled.

However, during the communication session on the night of 15 April, the spacecraft entered the control zone of the Soviet ground control equipment with the main telemetry not working. The backup system showed a dangerous drop in pressure in the pressurised compartment, and the ground equipment recorded “a change in orbit parameters explained by external forces” between the 177th (14 April) and 193rd turns (15 April). Soon “Salyut-2” stopped giving signs of life, on 28 May 1973 under the action of natural aerodynamic braking, it entered the atmosphere and crumbled over the Pacific Ocean.

The emergency commission headed by Vladimir Chelomey, formed on 27 April by order of the Minister of General Machine Building Sergei Afanasyev, called the most likely cause of the malfunction of the station a chain of events due to a “manufacturing defect in the propulsion system”.

However, the station’s designers had doubts about the true causes of the accident, because the question of the impact on the station of external forces raised by ballistics remained unanswered. One of the possible options was considered damage to the hermetic hull fragments formed as a result of the explosion of the third stage of the launch vehicle “Salyut-2” in the flight interval between 3 and 4 April. The station passed through a gradually expanding cloud of fragments on 14-15 April. A collision with one of them apparently caused the accident.

The second Almaz in orbit

Despite the tragic fate of the first Almaz, flight tests allowed for clarification of the aerodynamic characteristics of the complex and confirmed the performance of the “board” in the main modes of flight. The results obtained were useful to the developers when preparing subsequent stations.

On 25 June 1974, the second Almaz (No. 101-2) entered orbit, which was called Salyut-3 in the public press.

Eight days later, on 3 July, the Soyuz-14 transport ship with the first expedition went into space. The crew was headed by Colonel Pavel Popovich, an experienced cosmonaut of the “Gagarin” set, while Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Artyukhin, a military engineer, became the flight engineer. Understudies Boris Volynov and Vitaly Zholobov, staying on Earth, helped to keep in touch with the “Berkut” while staying in the Yevpatoria MCC – the orbital station flight control group was based there.

The two-week work plan of the first expedition included de-commissioning and testing of the new station and testing of military-applied equipment for observation of objects on the surface of the Earth and ocean. The civilian part of the programme included medical and biological research, determination of physical characteristics of the surrounding space, photography in the interests of geologists and cartographers, detection of water body pollution, inventory of forests and agricultural lands. It was envisaged a lot of work with on-board computer complex.

4 July “Soyuz-14” approached the “Almaz”. Popovich recalls: “Ballistics brought us to the station at 600 metres. At 100 metres we took control, and at fifty the ship began to drift to the right. And at that time we ran out of communication with Earth … I immediately stopped the movement… Everything seemed to be normal, but the ship was “carried”. There was no clarity, and we had to dock. To feel the control knobs better, I took off my spacesuit gloves – it was very difficult to hold the small knobs in my gloves. Yura tried to protest because if we hit and there was depressurisation, nothing would save us. I told him: “You will be saved and say that I did it voluntarily”. I quickly regained orientation – and we slammed right into the centre of the docking cone”.

After tightening, the joint was found to be leaking due to a drop in pressure between the O-rings. The crew asked Chelomey, who came on the line, for permission to go to the station “under their responsibility”. MCC hesitated for an hour and a half.

“Yura,” Popovich said, “if only I had a bottle right now, I’d be happy to have a glass to relieve the tension”. I didn’t want to come back with nothing…

Finally, the General Designer got in touch and authorised the transition.

Two weeks on “Salyut”

And the work began: de-conservation of systems, “revival” of photo equipment, film processing complex, and, of course, “civil” scientific experiments. In particular, within the framework of the international programme “TROPEX-74”, photography of cloud cover, typhoons, and cyclones over the Atlantic were carried out.

Due to a very dense mode of work (the onboard equipment was originally designed to be serviced by three cosmonauts, and after the Soyuz-11 disaster, the transport ship carried only two people into orbit), the crew had short rest periods. Working in different countries in different light conditions, they had to shoot objects in the daytime and at night.

On the third day suddenly a siren sounded, which is connected to sensors informing about vital parameters: pressure, voltage in the network, concentration of carbon dioxide and others. Having switched off the siren, the astronauts rushed to find out the cause. Everything turned out to be normal. But the siren went off again! After the third signal, Popovich shorted the siren. The signal no longer interfered, but until the end of the flight the astronauts had a feeling of constant anxiety: because if something happened – the siren would not work.

Objects on Earth were filmed with 14 cameras, which had to be regularly recharged. Astronauts did it almost automatically, in the dark. Once they had to switch on the light: “It seemed that it [the film] took up all the free space – Popovich recalls – and the film was flammable at that time. One spark and there would be such a fire… We had to manually roll the film into tight rolls”.

Loading the ballistic capsule turned into an unwitting experiment in moving in weightlessness massive cargo: pulled with the help of a manipulator from the nest and pushed along the station. “And it slowly floated – Popovich recounted – But how to stop her? It is round, without handles, and there is nothing to grab onto. If it crashes into the board, it will penetrate through, its mass is huge – 360 kilos! Then I ducked under the capsule and, holding on, clinging to everything, stopped it when there were about 20 centimetres to the wall. Otherwise, it would have broken through the board“.

The flight programme included not only military-applied, technical, and scientific experiments but also tasting of the new onboard food. Having tried the new products, Popovich and Artyukhin wrote a laconic review: “I liked everything“. That’s how tasty the food turned out to be.

During the two weeks of work on board the Almaz, the cosmonauts checked all systems, adjusted the temperature, moved fans, achieved the best air circulation, mounted devices for fixing portable devices, and other work. Having fully completed the programme, the crew successfully returned to Earth on 19 July. This ended the first space flight under the military-applied programme.

Igla failure

The second expedition to Salyut-3 was launched on 26 August 1974: the crew of the Soyuz-15 spacecraft – Gennady Sarafanov and Lev Demin – was to work aboard the station for a month.

After the normal withdrawal the automatic search wal launched, but at close range automatic approach and docking system “Igla” “perceived” the remaining distance to the station of 350 metres as 20 kilometres and issued impulse engines to accelerate the ship. As a result, Soyuz rushed to the station at a speed of 20 metres per second (the calculated speed at touchdown is 0.3 metres per second) and only due to the presence of the lateral component of speed swept 40 metres past Salyut. But then the working Igla turned the ship around and repeated the deadly manoeuvre twice.

The crew did not realise what was happening until the Earth intervened and gave the command to switch off the automatic approach mode. During three attempts of approach, so much fuel was used up that there was barely enough left for the braking impulse. The State Commission decided to land the ship urgently.

On 28 August the descent vehicle with Sarafanov and Demin successfully landed in Kazakhstan. This was the first night landing in the history of Soviet cosmonautics.

Farewell fireworks

Having heard the report of Yuri Semenov – the representative of the Central Committee for Design Bureau – on the flight of Soyuz-15, the State Commission concluded that the Igla system required serious revision, which would take time… The further use of Salyut-3 in manned mode had to be abandoned. The flight on an additional programme in automatic mode was planned to continue until the end of September 1974.

23 September 1974, the return capsule with photographic films taken by the first expedition, on command from Earth separated from the station and entered the atmosphere. Due to abnormal operation of the landing system (premature shooting of the parachute), the landing was hard and the capsule crumpled. However, the photographic films were retrieved and developed.

Automatic flight of the station continued under an additional programme for another four months and ended on January 24, 1975: on commands from Earth “Salyut-3” was brought down from orbit. At the same time the Shield-1 defence system was tested: a high-speed gun in the lower part of the hull fired two bursts. The designers made sure that the shots do not affect the controllability of the Almaz. The shells fired against the direction of flight entered the atmosphere and burned up before the station. “Salyut-3” went out of orbit and collapsed in the dense layers of the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.

Earlier Pro Kosmos narrated about the fate of “Chelomeyev’s” cosmonauts – the group was formed at the Central Design Bureau of Mechanical Engineering under the leadership of Vladimir Chelomey to test manned vehicles on the ground and in space. However, for all 18 years of the group’s existence, none of its test cosmonauts made a single space flight on an Almaz.