FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1978
1978 - 0016.PDF
16 FLIGHT International, 7 January 1978 Salyut 6/Soyuz 26 flight continues SOVIET cosmonauts Lt Col Yuri Romanenko and his engineer Georgy Grechko last week continued their scientific and technological work aboard the Salyut 6 space station. Greehko's examination of the docking port during his spaoewalk on Decem ber 20 confirmed that the abortive docking attempt by the Soyuz 25 crew last October had not caused any damage. This 20min EVA began with a depressurisation of the habitation module, followed by hatch open at 0036hr Moscow time. The total period of depressurisation was lhr 28min (see Flight last week, page 1900). Konstantmi Feoktisov, a member of the three-man Voskhod 1 flight in 1964, is quoted by Novosti as saying that the addition of a second docking module at the rear of Salyut 6, on the side which previously contained equip ment associated with the propulsion system, has called for some redesign. It seems therefore that the possibility of a second docking port was not considered during the original design of the space station, but came later, perhaps with the redesign of the Soyuz to take two people rather than three after the Soyuz 11 disaster. The two docking modules are identi cal in design and the automatic rendezvous procedure is the same. The only difference is the orientation of the Salyut to the approaching Soyuz, which depends on whether a front or rear approach is used. Some western observers think that Soyuz 5 also carried a second docking module, though Russian sources have not con firmed this. Following Russia's policy of advanc ing cautiously, the crew of Soyuz 25 were briefed to use the original dock ing position on this first flight to the new space station. Romanenko and Grechko were the first to use the new port. After docking, at 6.02 a.m. Mos cow time on December 11, the crew spent a further three hours aboard their ferry craft, checking the space station and powering up the systems before being authorised to open the entry hatch and enter the Salyut vehicle. Feoktisov notes that new tempera ture and attitude control equipment, still in development during previous Salyut flights, is installed on Salyut 6. There are three television cameras (two black-and-white and one colour) for interior coverage, and mountings on the outside of the space station can accommodate three cameras for external photography. The cameras are similar to those used on the ASTP (Apollo/Soyuz Test Project) flight of July 1975. More attention is given to creature comforts than in previous Salyuts. There is, for example, a folding poly thene shower cubicle into which hot water is sprayed under pressure and recovered by extractor pump. Among the scientific equipment are sensors to register the impact of micrometeorites. European Spacelab astronauts selected A FINAL group of four astronauts eligible to serve as payload specialists on the first Spacelab flight has been selected by the European Space Agency. They are Franco Malerbo, 31, from Italy; Ulf Merbold, 36, from Germany; Claude Nicollier, 33, a Swiss working for the European Space Tech nology Centre; and Wubbo Ockels, 31, from the Netherlands. The last 12 candidates included men from Bel- gium, Denmark, France, Great Britain and Ireland, but eight of them failed the special Nasa Level 11 medical standards. The four will be reduced to three next May, two of whom will then act as back-ups for the single payload specialist who will fly on the first Shuttle/Spacelab mission along side American operators. ... * % I " ~?8 ^t Lockheed U-2 looks at the Big Bang EVEN so imaginative a designer as Lockheed's C. L. "Kelly" Johnson could hardly have foreseen that his long-range U-2 reconnaissance aircraft might one day take off to examine objects at the edge of the universe, but this is just what is now hap pening. One of Nasa's research U-2s, operated by the Ames Centre out of Moffett Field, Calif, is carrying sensi tive radio equipment to 65,000ft so that it can measure the faint micro wave radiation formed during the first second or so of the Big Bang some 15,000 million years ago. The measurements indicate for the first time that the disturbance which set the universe expanding (and, indeed, which gave it form) took place in a very smooth way, with matter and energy expanding at equal rates in all directions, and without the violently disruptive processes associated with terrestrial explosions. Scientists in charge of the project also say that the residual radiation still circulating is so uniform that it provides a reference for measuring the motion of galaxies through space. The U-2 measurements seem to show that the universe is not rotating—sur prising, because the building blocks themselves, planets, stars and galaxies, all rotate. The researchers say that the picture emerging is of an ex tremely smooth-starting process. The most cataclysmic event imaginable turns out to be finely orchestrated; either conditions during the process were very regular, or other influences have since combined to provide a very ordered balance. Not all of the U-2's activities are concerned with scientific measure ments on the grand scale. When not investigating the cosmos, it is used for agricultural and Earth-resources photography. The two Viking orbiters continue to map the surface of Mars from their paths around the planet. This picture, taken by orbiter I in October last year from an altitude of 8,500 miles, shows a region in the Margaritifer Sinus, together with Phobos, one of the two natural satellites of Mars. It was passing underneath at a height of 4,260 miles. This picture is one of the clearest to be taken since clouds of dust obscured large areas of the planet last February
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
