Backup crew

Mission parameters

• Mass: 6850 kg
• Perigee: 190 km
• Apogee: 231 km
• Inclination: 51.6°
• Period: 89.7 minutes

Mission highlights

This was the first (1st) expedition to the new Salyut 7

Salyut 7

Salyut 7 was a space station in low Earth orbit from April 1982 to February 1991. It was first manned in May 1982 with two crew via Soyuz T-5, and last visited in June 1986, by Soyuz T-15. Various crew and modules were used over its lifetime, including a total of 12 manned and 15 unmanned launches...

 space station, launched into Earth orbit earlier in 1982. Salyut 7 was similar to the Salyut 6

Salyut 6

Salyut 6 , DOS-5, was a Soviet orbital space station, the eighth flown as part of the Salyut programme. Launched on 29 September 1977 by a Proton rocket, the station was the first of the 'second-generation' type of space station. Salyut 6 possessed several revolutionary advances over the earlier...

 (1977–1982) space station it superseded, but featured a number of improvements. The Soyuz T-5 spacecraft docked with Salyut 7 in orbit, and it was visited by the 2nd and 3rd expeditions to the space station. One advantage the new Salyut 7 station had over Salyut 6, was continuously available hot water.

The Elbrus crew ejected a 28-kg amateur radio satellite from a Salyut 7 trash airlock on May 17, 1982. The Soviets called this the first launch of a communications satellite from a manned space vehicle. They did this ahead of the launch of two large geostationary satellites from the U.S. Space Shuttle (STS-5

STS-5

STS-5 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission, the fifth shuttle mission overall and the fifth flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia. It was the first shuttle mission to deploy communications satellites into orbit...

, November 11-16, 1982).

On May 25, the Elbrus crew reoriented Salyut 7 so the aft end of the Progress pointed toward Earth. This placed the station in gravity-gradient stabilization

Gravity-gradient stabilization

Gravity-gradient stabilization is a method of stabilizing artificial satellites or space tethers in a fixed orientation using only the orbited body's mass distribution and the Earth's gravitational field. The main advantage over using active stabilization with propellants, gyroscopes or reaction...

. Lebedev remarked in his diary that the attitude control jets were “very noisy,” and that they sounded like “hitting a barrel with a sledgehammer.” Of Salyut 7 during the unpacking of Progress 13, Lebedev said, “It looks like we’re getting ready to move or have just moved to a new apartment.” The following day the Elbrus crew closed the hatch from the work compartment into the intermediate compartment so the TsUP could pump fuel from Progress 13 to Salyut 7. The crew monitored the operation but played little active role in it. May 29th was spent organizing the supplies delivered. At the same time, according to Lebedev, “we filled the resupply ship with what we don’t need and tied them down with ropes. When I enter the resupply ship, it jingles with a metallic sound, so when we separate it will sound like a brass band.” Progress 13 pumped 300 liters of water aboard on May 31st. On June 2nd Progress 13 lowered the station’s orbit to 300 km to receive Soyuz T-6.

End of T-5

The Soyuz T-5 spacecraft was undocked in August 1982, leaving Saylut 7 and Soyuz T-7 spacecraft in orbit. The spacecraft returned to Earth successfully with Popov, Serebrov and Savitskaya, also called the "Dneiper crew". The Soyuz T-5 had been in space six weeks.

The initial "Elbrus crew", would return to Earth in the Soyuz T-7 spacecraft in December 1982.