November 1982:letters

Salyut 6 Cosmonauts

Sir, In an article in the August 1981 issue of Aviatsiya I Kosmonavtika entitled “The Extended Life of Salyut 6” Gherman Titov states that “the original plans for operations on board Salyut 6 envisaged only three basic expeditions”. Given this information, I believe it is possible to reconstruct the crew assignments for the three long-duration missions originally planned for Salyut 6:

Prime crew

Kovalyonok-Ryumin

Romanenko-Ivanchenkov

Lyakhov-Lebedev

Reserve crew

Romanenko-Ivanchenkov

Lyakhov-Lebedev

Popov-Strekalov

I am adhering to the pattern observed during the successful long-duration missions to Salyut 6 of the reserve crew advancing to prime status on the subsequent “basic expedition". The assignments for the first expedition have been documented but those of the second and third are somewhat more speculative. Teaming Lyakhov with Lebedev is the product of supposition from the actual crew assignments, as outlined below. There is precedence for a Popov-Strekalov crew, since they served as reserves to Bykovsky and Aksyonov on Soyuz 22.

The crew assignments were disrupted by the Soyuz 25 docking failure, possibly leadirtg to the following scenario. Grechko, due to his familiarity with the station’s docking mechanism, replaced Ivanchenkov as Romanenko’s flight engineer in order to assess any damage as a result of the Soyuz 25 docking attempts. Ivanchenkov was joined by Kovalyonok to form the Soyuz 26 reserve crew. Dzhanibekov and Makarov then flew aboard Soyuz 27 to provide the long- duration crew with a fresh spacecraft for their return flight. As Kovalyonok and Ivanchenkov were again the reserves for Soyuz 27,it would appear that the Soyuz 27 crew were not involved in training for long-duration missions. They had probably been summoned out of the Soyuz T development programme specifically for this flight. Makarov's appearance on the Soyuz T-3 mission would seem to bear this out. Kovalyonok and Ivanchenkov then moved on to fly Soyuz 29, with Lyakhov and Ryumin as the reserve crew. Ryumin’s preferential assignment to the third basic expedition crew (Soyuz 32) therefore moved Lebedev to reserve status for that mission with Popov. As a result of this, Strekalov was probably removed from training for a long-duration flight to Salyut 6. He was then free to begin training for flights aboard the improved Soyuz T spacecraft, subsequently serving as cosmonaut researcher on Soyuz T-3. The unexpected longevity of the station provided the opportunity for two additional basic expeditions to be flown.