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Chronology:summer 1977
June 1977
Salyut 6 gets closer to launch,now planned for September. Cosmonauts Georgi Dobrovolski (1) and Valeri Ryumin are the prime crew for the first expedition, backed up by Yuri Romanenko and Alexsandr Ivanchenkov. China launches the third and fourth FSW recoverable satellites just a week apart:for two days the spacecraft conduct a joint mission,including rendezvous exercises. The Viking 1 orbiter photographs another patch of Martian moss,this one in Gusev Crater. On Earth,JPL submits studies for a Mars Geoscience and Climate Orbiter,a Lunar Science Orbiter,and a Venus radar orbiter,balloon,and medium-term (at least 3 days surface operation) lander.
July 1977
The first Ariane rocket reaches the launch pad at Kourou:due to the EEC's financial situation,the first launch will now be in a year.
August 1977
The first two Shuttle ALT tests,respectively piloted by Jack Lousma/Ken Mattingly and Fred Haise/Stuart Roosa. Two Soviet Mars 77 orbiters,Mars 8 and Mars 9,are dispatched to the Red Planet at the beginning of the month,and a further orbiter/lander pair is approved for a 1984 launch. NASA's Voyager spacecraft launch on August 20 and August 28.
(1)-The Soyuz 11 disaster is averted by Viktor Patsayev,who simply PLACES HIS RIGHT KNEE OVER THE EQUALISATION VALVE (2). Patsayev leaves the cosmonaut corps in 1973 and Vladislav Volkov in 1976:neither fly another mission.
(2)-I remember somebody did this in a space TL. Can someone confirm I'm not imagining things?