core first stage burned out it could not be cast off. Second stage ignition occurred as normal, but the booster was rapidly dragged off course by the weight of the spent core first stage. When the course deviation reach 10°, the automatic safety system came into operation. It shut down the booster and separated the Soyuz. At separation the Soyuz was 180 km high and moving at 5.5 km per second. The Soyuz turned around and fired its main engine against the direction of flight to slow down, then discarded its orbital and service modules. Reentry was brutal, with the cosmonauts experiencing up to 12-18 g’s. They landed unhurt, however, in the eastern U.S.S.R. The flight lasted only 21 min, but 24 hr passed before the crew could be recovered. This was the only suborbital flight of the Soviet manned space program. More importantly, it was the only downrange abort in manned spaceflight history.[1][2] |}
| Soyuz 18 | May 24-July 26, 1975 | |
| Pyotr Klimuk, Vitali Sevastyonov Crew code name—Kavkaz Less than two months after “the April 5 anomaly,” Soyuz 18 (Soyuz 18b in the West) docked with Salyut 4. Its crew spent 62 days aboard the space station. They were in orbit while Soyuz 19 (called simply Soyuz during the mission) conducted joint operations with the U.S. Apollo spacecraft, and twice exchanged brief greetings with their colleagues. | ||
1.8.4.4 Soyuz Ferry Missions to Salyut 5
For information on Salyut operations during these Soyuz missions, see section 2.6.3.
| Soyuz 21 | July 6-August 24, 1976 | |
| Boris Volynov, Vitali Zholobov Crew code name—Baykal Docked with Salyut 5 on July 7, 1976. The crew returned home after 49 days in space. | ||
| Soyuz 23 | October 14-16, 1976 | |
| Vyacheslav Zudov, Valeri Rozhdestvenski Crew code name—Radon Suffered an automatic docking system malfunction during final approach to Salyut 5. The cosmonauts were ordered to return to Earth. They had less than 2 days of battery power left and had already missed the landing opportunity for that day, so they powered down systems to conserve power. A blizzard with squall force winds broke out in the landing zone, but the Soyuz capsule was designed to land in any weather. Reentry over North Africa was normal. The Soyuz 23 descent module lowered in the dark on its single red and white parachute, rocking as it encountered the high winds driving snow across the landing area. The descent module splashed down in freezing water, surrounded by ice floes, 8 km offshore in Lake Tengiz. All recovery efforts were thwarted. The cosmonauts bobbed in the capsule with systems shut off to save power. The capsule floated, and the pressure equalization valve above the |
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