This Saturday is a special day in the history of Russian cosmonautics. On February 11, 1985, there was a classified state of emergency at the "Salyut-7" station. Cosmonauts Janibekov and Savinykh were awarded the Stars of Heroes for a routine flight, but in fact, the flight was anything but routine. Oleg Pakshin on that state of emergency and the film which is being shot about it.
This story is still amazing. For the first time in history a spacecraft docked with an uncontrollable object. With the astronauts performing, in orbit, the most unique and complex repairs ever. At the time it was the most dangerous battle between the USSR and USA in regards to Star Wars. On that day, due to problems with the "Salyut-7's" electronics and several short circuits, the radio signal to the "Salyut-7" station went dark. Because of that, controlling it from Earth was impossible, and there was no one on board to control it manually. It just so happens that this emergency coincided with a scheduled crew change. The object was uncontrollably deorbiting.
"A Soviet space station is falling on the heads of Americans", — wrote American newspapers. While at Cape Canaveral, they had already prepared a cargo space shuttle to intercept it. Stopping the Americans from "stealing the station" and our cosmic secrets was not just a matter of honor. A huge uncontrollable 20-ton object might have fallen anywhere from Southern Europe to Japan. At that time The Soviet Union still didn’t have the Buran, a manned cargo ship, that is able to remove objects from space. So the cosmonauts made an unprecedented decision. They would not bring the station back to Earth but rather put it back in orbit. There are handles here, and here are two more. And a switch, which changes the control from this one to those.
So the "Soyuz", which usually only carries crews back and forth to the station, was urgently rebuilt as a repair and rescue shuttle. Where the third crew member usually sat additional water containers were placed, while fuel tanks were filled to their capacity. It was unknown how badly the station was damaged, whether it would be possible to dock with it, or how long and difficult it would be to finish. "I arrived at Zvezdny, entered and said, "Volodya, the situation is as follows. Do you agree?" He immediately answered yes. An impossible task: to find a broken station floating wildly in space, fly up to it and dock with it, as they say, by eye. We were waiting near the illuminator for it to appear. And it did! It looked like a little star, but we realized that it was not a star, not a planet, we realized that that was our station". The approach began meter by meter.
The distance was 200 meters and the speed was very slow. It was then that the crew realized that the side they were on had an inoperative docking adapter. So the crew decided to fly around the station, but spaceships do not fly like fighter jets. One mistake and they could collide with the station and that would be certain death. But they did it. There is a point of contact. We have an access point. After getting from the docking compartment into the station, the first thing the astronauts felt was extreme and bitter cold and total darkness.
During "Salyut's" uncontrolled flight, all the life support systems on the station were out of service. All the water was frozen and the pipes had burst. Savinykh and Dzhanibekov immediately went to work on repairing all the equipment to turn that iron barrel back into the functioning orbital space station it once was. Their water and air supplies would only last for five days. How did they manage to restore electricity working without gloves, in sub-zero temperatures, or cope with flooding from melted ice, or not dying from oxygen? How did they prevent a fire from starting, and the most important part, get the station back into orbit? What are you doing? You can’t do it without an order. Three decades later, the country will finally learn about the courage of our astronauts from the action-movie "Salyut-7".
Vladimir Vdovichenkov and Pavel Derevyanko will play Dzhanibekov and Savinykh. Special shooting in zero gravity will help us better understand this unique operation. The new Russian blockbuster "Salyut-7" will soon be shown in theaters across the country. This feat will not be forgotten!
