On February 11, 1985, there was a big and then, naturally, classified emergency at the Salyut-7 station. Astronauts Dzhanibekov and Savinykh received the Stars of Heroes for their flight, but in reality it was extraordinary. So what was this emergency?
Communication with the Soviet orbital station Salyut-7 was lost 32 years ago. Due to problems with the electronics and the short circuit circuit, the radio signal disappeared, remote control from the ground was impossible, and there was simply no one to take the manual mode - the emergency coincided with a crew change. The object spontaneously left orbit. Meanwhile, the information about the state of emergency was obviously leaked to the Western press for a reason. "The Soviet station is flying at the heads of the Americans," wrote newspapers in the United States. And at Cape Canaveral, a cargo shuttle was already being prepared for interception.
“It could not be ruled out that, as in science fiction films about Bond, the cargo hold and our satellite would open and the spacecraft would be dragged from orbit,” said Sergei Rogov, scientific director of the Institute for the USA and Canada Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Not letting the Americans "steal the station" and our space secrets was not only a matter of honor - an uncontrolled flight and fall could indeed lead to disaster, an uncontrollable 20-ton colossus could collapse anywhere - from southern Europe to Japan. The Soviet Union did not yet have manned cargo ships "Buranov" to pick up the emergency object from space, and it seemed that an impossible decision was made: the station should not be removed from orbit, but returned to it.
The Soyuz spacecraft, which usually carries crews to the station, is urgently converted into a rescue vehicle. All unnecessary things were removed from the cockpit in order to lighten the weight, instead of the seat of the third crew member, additional containers with water were loaded, the fuel tanks were filled to capacity. It was not known what damage was at the station, whether it would be possible to dock to it, and how much time and effort it would take. The only one who was confident of success was the crew commander Vladimir Dzhanibekov. He had already seen it in a dream.
The task that faced Dzhanibekov and flight engineer Viktor Savinykh was on the verge of the possible: to find a dead station in space, fly up and dock with it, as they say, by eye, because no one knew the exact coordinates of the Salyut, the station did not send a radio signal:
“We waited in the window where it was supposed to appear, a little star, but we realized that it was not a star, that it was not a planet, we realized that it was a station,” cosmonaut Viktor Savinykh recalls.
Rapprochement began. No room for error to aim to catch the station in the laser rangefinder. Just a few seconds. Then - again in line of sight. Meter by meter.
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Only at this distance did the crew realize that the station was deployed to the ship with a non-working docking station. The crew decides to fly around the station, but spaceships do not fly like fighters, maneuvering, but only straight, only adjusting their trajectory. In case of error, collision and imminent death. But they did it!
A unique case in the history of manned astronautics: the way Dzhanibekov and Savinykh did it, no one has ever docked, especially with an uncontrollable object. Then the astronauts had to equalize the pressure at the station and the spacecraft. Despite the fact that Salyut was in an emergency drift for four months, the station was kept hermetically sealed.
Once inside the station from the docking bay, the first thing that the cosmonauts felt was the wildest cold and pitch darkness. During the uncontrolled flight of Salyut, all life support systems at the station went out of order: all the water froze, and the titanium pipelines simply burst. In the shortest possible time, Dzhanibekov and Savinykh had to repair all the equipment and turn this iron barrel back into an operating orbital space station.
There were only five days of water and air reserves. How in subzero temperatures, working even without elementary gloves, they managed to ring all the electrical circuits of the fireworks, restore the power supply, and then cope with the flood at the station from melted ice, now not die from an excess of oxygen and prevent a fire ?! How was the station restored from the outside? Why did the heroes return one by one, but on Earth did not know whether to reward or punish the crew?
Three decades later, the country will learn about the courage of our cosmonauts from the action-packed film Salyut-7. Vladimir Vdovichenkov and Pavel Derevyanko - in the role of Dzhanibekov and Savinykh. The unique space operation will be told by unique footage in zero gravity mode. Watch the new domestic blockbuster "Salyut-7" very soon in all cinemas of the country. This feat will not be forgotten!