November 1982:milestones

May 1982

20 NASA establishes a Space Station Task Force headed by John Hodge (originally from London) and Bob Freitag (a long-standing Fellow of the BIS). The aim is to produce a permanent US space station by the early 1990’s.

22 An agreement is signed which will allow an Indian remote sensing satellite to be launched by tne Soviets in the mid-1980’s.

23 Progress 13 is launched to carry supplies to Salyut 7/Soyuz T-5. It docks with the station on 25 May. Konstantin Feoktistov, spacecraft designer and ex-cosmonaut, says that there is little difference between Salyuts 6 and 7.

June 1982

3 Cosmos 1374 is launched at 21.30 GMT from Kapustin Yar. It is reported to be a winged shuttle scale model; it reenters after one revolution at 98°E from a 230x191 km, 49.6° inclination orbit.

8 The Westar 5 communications satellite is launched by a Delta 3910/PAM from Cape Canaveral.

19 Meteosat 2, the European meteorological satellite, completes its first year in orbit. It continues to return visible, infrared and water vapour views of the Earth from its geostationary position at 0° longitude. The relaying of data from remote platforms has had to be continued by Meteosat 1 after the transponder in the new satellite failed to meet specifications.

24 The Soyuz T-6 crew, with the French cosmonaut Jean-Loup Chretien, is launched to dock with Salyut 6/Soyuz T-5. They return safely on 2 July.

27 The fourth Shuttle orbital mission, with astronauts Mattingly and Hartsfield, is launched. They land on 4 July at Edwards Air Force Base in California with President Reagan looking on.

29 Shuttle Orbiter Challenger leaves its production plant at Palmdale in California for the journey by road to Edwards Air Force Base. It is airlifted from the base soon after the landing of STS-4 on 4 July. Challenger will first fly in the STS-6 mission. An on-the-pad engine firing is planned for the first half of December.

30 General Beregovoi, commander of the Gagarin Space Training Centre, tells foreign journalists that two women, one a pilot-engineer and the other a flight engineer, gre training for a Salyut 7 flight.

July 1982

3 The Marecs B satellite arrives at Kourou in French Guiana for launch by Ariane L5 on 10 September.

10 The Progress 14 resupply craft is launched to dock with Salyut 7 on 12 July.

16 The Landsat 4 remote sensing satellite is orbited by the first Delta 3920 vehicle.

30 The Salyut 7 cosmonauts make a 2 hour 33 minute EVA to retrieve experiments from outside the space station. The Salyut 6/Cosmos 1267 vehicle reentered the atmosphere the day before.

August 1982

2 Installation of the scientific experiments on the Spacelab 1 pallet is completed at the Kennedy Space Center. Power will be applied later this month.

19 Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman since Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 to go into space. Serving as a researcher-cosmonaut aboard Soyuz T-7, she is accompanied by Leonid Popov and Alexander Serebrov. The crew will spend a week aboard Salyut 7 before returning in the Soyuz T-5 craft. Savitskaya, an experienced pilot, began training for her flight in 1980, well after NASA had chosen female astronaut candidates.