Post 8: Dawn
TV Anchor:
If you think you saw a new star at about 8:30 tonight, it was the Soviet Zarya space station. The station and its three cosmonauts passed directly over DC at 8:34 tonight, travelling northwest to southeast. The National Space Institute used the event to point out the growing gap between the US and Soviet space efforts.
CUT TO: EXT. DAY. A residential suburban street in Washington DC.
Space Expert:
Right now, the Soviets have a very dynamic program, a well thought-out program, and indeed the United States is foundering in a whole mess of technical and leadership problems. The idea of what we’re trying to do is to let the public know that, yes, the Soviets have something and it’s up there, and they should be aware of that, and the American program is in trouble.
- WJLA Local Evening News, 30th April 1975[1]
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The long-discussed Multi-module Cosmic Base Station (MKBS) could trace its lineage all the way back to the Orbital Station (OS) concept proposed by Korolev in 1960 as a military base in space. This later evolved into the MKBS, which was to form the centrepiece of an expansive Multi-module Orbital Complex (MOK), a constellation of military satellite systems serviced on orbit by human crews operating out of the MKBS. Despite much of this military role being assigned to first Chelomei then Glushko under the Almaz project, the MKBS had remained on TsKBEM’s books as an authorised project, waiting for the N-1 launch vehicle that would make it possible. With Groza reaching something like routine operations, and conscious of the success of the competing Almaz space stations, in mid-1973 Mishin had ordered an acceleration of efforts to put the first MKBS station into orbit.
The starting point for Mishin’s initial MKBS station was the OS-1 design that had reached the mock-up stage in 1969. Using one of these mock-ups as the basis of a pressure hull, the design was modified to use solar panels rather than the originally planned nuclear reactor, which was not expected to be ready for flight until 1978 at the earliest. Systems adapted from Soyuz or borrowed from Almaz were used to fit out the station, with the Soyuz 7K-OKS variant providing crew transfer services. Although the longer term plan was to support crews of six-to-nine cosmonauts and resupply with a new, automated Soyuz derived cargo ship, this first station would host a single docking port, with the bulk of the supplies needed to support up to five missions of three cosmonauts being launched with the station. This was made possible by the increased size and launch mass of the station, as well as the shortage of scientific experiments available to fill the hull at short notice.
By the middle of 1974, the MKBS No.1 design had been frozen and assembly was well underway. With an empty mass of 55 tonnes, the 21m long station was composed of a series of compartments, comparable in many ways to the Almaz station. At the rear was a 1.7m long Propulsion Compartment, containing engines for orbit maintenance and attitude control. This was attached to the main Working Compartment, a cylinder 8.6m long and 5.3m wide, which housed propellant, life support systems and consumables, plus scientific equipment. This transitioned down to the Habitation Compartment, 2.75m wide and 10.2m long. As the name suggests, this compartment housed crew facilities for three cosmonauts, as well as the flight control consoles. Four large solar arrays were mounted on the exterior of the Habitation Compartment, supplying up to 10kW of electrical power to the station. Finally, there was a small Transfer Compartment, mounting the SSVP port and Igla antennas that would be used to dock visiting Soyuz ferries.
Mishin was gearing up for a launch of MKBS-1 in mid 1975, but his plans for larger, modular follow-on stations were dashed in September 1974 when a joint decree of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers commanded the merger of the MKBS programme with the Almaz Phase 2 project, with overall responsibility for Soviet space stations transferred to Glushko’s NPO Energomash. Mishin would be permitted to launch his first station as a demonstration and propaganda tool, but follow-on stations would be built by Glushko.
Despite the blow this decision dealt to morale at TsKBEM, work continued on the station module, and by March 1975 the giant module was completing final checks and was moved to the MIK building at Site 112 to start integration with Groza vehicle number N1-10L. A month later, on 18th April 1975, MKBS module No. 1 lifted off from Pad 37. On the side of the fairing (the first for Groza lacking an escape tower) was written the station’s name: Zarya.
Zarya’s arrival and commissioning in orbit was monitored from the new Flight Control Centre in the Moscow suburb of Kaliningrad, close to TsKBEM headquarters. An expansion of the old Coordination and Computing Center for interplanetary probes, the new facility had been developed to support the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and was far more impressive than the old centre at Yevpatoriya in Crimea. The new control centre had debuted in February 1975, supporting the Soyuz 15 ASTP rehearsal mission, and was now to be the primary control facility for all future Soviet crewed space missions. The opening of the new control centre had also been marked by a change of ground control’s callsign from “Zarya” to “Moscow”. This would prove helpful in avoiding confusion when calling the new space station.
With Zarya safely in orbit and functioning nominally, attention quickly turned to the launch of Soyuz 16 with the station’s first crew. As Zarya was a TsKBEM project, two of the three crew members were civilian engineer-cosmonauts, led by Mission Commander Vladislav Volkov and Research Engineer Oleg Makarov. They were joined by Air Force cosmonaut Anatoli Voronov as Flight Engineer, who had served on the back-up crew for the Soyuz 13 mission to Almaz 2, and so had trained extensively on that military station’s systems. Both Makarov and Voronov would be making their first spaceflight, whilst Volkov had previously flown as the Flight Engineer on Soyuz 7. Operating under the callsign “Ruben” (Ruby), the crew’s training had been more chaotic than was normal, as the compressed schedule to get Zarya ready for launch had seen many last-minute changes in the experiments carried and their layout on the station. Often, modifications made as the station was being prepared failed to make it into the training mock-up, raising concerns that the crew were not ready to support the mission. Nevertheless, when the State Commission met on 23rd April, they confirmed both crew and spacecraft as ready to fly.
Soyuz 16 lifted off from Baikonur’s Site 1 launch pad at 07:55 on Friday 25th April 1975. The Soyuz-U rocket operated smoothly, delivering the 7K-OKS spacecraft into an orbit co-planar with Zarya, but around 30km lower. The crew reported feeling fine, and later that day began manoeuvring to put Soyuz on a transfer orbit to the station. After a sleep period, the final approach commenced early the next day, approaching to within 7km of the station by 07:00 on 26th April. At this point the Igla system was expected to establish radio contact with the station, but once again the automatic docking equipment proved unreliable, refusing to lock up on Zarya. After consultations with the Chief Operative and Control Group (GOGU), Volkov was commanded to begin a slow manual approach, firing the Soyuz’s SKD engine to approach at 10m/s. At a distance of 5.6km Igla finally achieved radio lock, and the automatic systems took over for final approach, and mechanical contact was achieved at 08:12. Just over two hours later, the docking hatch was opened and Volkov and Voronov entered Zarya’s Transfer Compartment.
The first few days on board were focussed on activating and checking out the station’s systems. The crew found the station’s vital systems mostly working as expected, but several of the experiments experienced problems, the most serious of which was the failure of the cover of the KATE-UO stereographic camera to open, making the instrument unusable.
In terms of living space available, all three cosmonauts expressed how spacious the workshop interior was compared to Soyuz, or even Almaz, and Zarya’s impressive size was frequently emphasised during their regular “Cosmovision” television broadcasts. Although a few pre-recorded television programmes had been broadcast from the Almaz stations, the frequent five- to ten-minute live telecasts from Zarya were a new innovation for Soviet missions, and helped to boost the profile of the station with the Soviet public and the wider world. Subtitled highlights from the transmissions proved surprisingly popular in US television news clips, as the mission was taking place during the build-up to the much anticipated Apollo-Soyuz joint flight, and so Western audiences were eager to learn more about the Soviet space programme.
Despite its hurried construction and a general lack of cooperation between the TsKBEM and Energomash design bureaux, the designers of Zarya had been able to take advantage of many lessons learnt from the three Almaz missions. Voronov in particular commented favourably on the small individual ‘cabins’ each cosmonaut was provided with, compared with simply attaching a sleeping bag to any convenient wall, as had been the practice with Almaz. Other aspects that had been improved included keeping the cosmonauts on a regular 24-hour cycle, rather than the shorter ‘day’ used on Almaz-1 to keep synchronised with ground contact windows. This avoided unnecessary disruption to the crew’s circadian rhythms, greatly improving their productivity and morale. Communications sessions with TsUP were generally shorter and more focussed, avoiding micro-management of the cosmonauts’ time or bombarding them with trivial or repetitive queries.
Time management was particularly important for the crew of Soyuz 16 due to the large number of experiments carried on board. In an effort to prove the value of the station, Mishin and his engineers had crammed as many experiments as possible into Zarya. However, whilst the large size of the station meant that it could physically host almost twice as many experiments as Almaz, the number of cosmonauts available to operate them remained the same. As originally conceived, Zarya was to have included three docking ports on the Transfer Compartment, allowing regular crews of six supported by uncrewed cargo ships, but the rush to complete the station had led to this capability being deleted.
Also, the switch from nuclear energy to solar panels to provide electricity meant that power to operate these payloads had to be rationed. Some on-going experiments with moderate power needs, such as the Oazis plant growth experiment, were able to operate continuously, but most could only be run during dedicated sessions on specifically scheduled days. The time available was further reduced by the size of the station and late changes in the layout of the hardware, meaning the cosmonauts often had to spend an hour or more finding and preparing the equipment before the experiments could start. The short training time and sheer number of experiments meant that even more time was taken up in reading instructions, much to the frustration of the scientists on the ground.
Despite these problems and frustrations, by the second week of the mission the cosmonauts had settled into a steady routine, and the mission proceeded relatively smoothly for the next month. The cosmonauts made observations of the Earth and stars at multiple wavelengths, conducted experiments in plant growth and materials science, and underwent a wide range of biomedical examinations, on top of a vigorous exercise regime. Experience with the Almaz missions had demonstrated the importance of exercise in maintaining health and allowing for a quick re-adaptation to full gravity on return to Earth, and the extra volume available in Zarya had allowed for a wide variety of exercise equipment to provided, including a treadmill, exercise bike, and elasticated “weight machines”. Cosmonauts on Almaz missions had noted that use of the treadmill in their stations tended to set up vibrations that affected astronomical observations, or could even cause sympathetic oscillations in the solar arrays. In contrast, the crew of Zarya found this to be far less of a problem, thanks to a combination of an updated treadmill design with built in vibration damping, and the increased mass and differing harmonics of the station. High-precision observations still needed to be conducted in periods when none of the crew were exercising, but the solar arrays were never put at risk by a cosmonaut’s jogging.
After eight weeks on-orbit, it was time for the crew of Soyuz 16 to pack their belongings and prepare for their return to Earth. Although luxurious compared to previous Soviet spacecraft, a number of minor malfunctions and inconveniences meant that the cosmonauts were eager to get home. For example, all three cosmonauts complained that the station interior remained overall quite cool, hovering just under 20℃ regardless of the setting of the control thermostat. Their diet had also become quite monotonous, with no opportunity for re-supply missions to mix up the menu. This was something that the next crew would also have to contend with, as all vittals for the three planned missions had been launched with the station.
After setting the station for automatic operation and shutting down all unnecessary equipment, the crew returned to their Soyuz capsule, sealing the hatch to the station at 07:15 on Sunday 22nd June, 1975. Undocking came less than an hour later, followed by a textbook re-entry and landing in a remote region of the Kazakh SSR two hours before sunset that same day. Volkov, Makarov and Voronov were celebrated as Heroes of the Soviet Union, their “Cosmovision” broadcasts having made them famous throughout the USSR and across the world.
Unfortunately, Soyuz 16 would prove to be the only crewed mission to Zarya. Late in the night of 14th July, while the flight controllers and engineers at TsUP were focussed on the ongoing Soyuz 17 ASTP mission, one of Zarya’s on-board experiments, which should have been switched off before the crew departed, shorted out. The short triggered a fire, which quickly spread throughout the station. By morning, when mission controllers realised that the station had missed its last two contact periods, Zarya was dead in space. As Leonov and Stafford shook hands in orbit, TASS quietly informed the world that operations with the Zarya space station had been successfully concluded, with all mission objectives fully met.
Despite the disappointing loss of Zarya, 1975 continued to be a busy year for TsKBEM, as for the second year running two Groza launches were planned. The second, N1-11L, was aimed beyond Earth orbit, and even past to Moon, towards one of the N-1’s original objectives: Mars.
The Soviet Union had a poor record of Mars exploration. Up to the end of 1973 a total of fifteen Mars missions had been launched by the USSR, with four departing Earth in 1973 alone. Of these missions, nine were total failures, and only one, the Mars-5 orbiter, would prove to be fully successful. Of the partial successes, there were some notable achievements, including the first soft landing on the planet by Mars-3 in December 1971 (although this triumph was muted when the lander fell silent after just 110 seconds on the surface). However, next to the results obtained by the American Mariner probes - especially Mariner-9, which entered orbit in November 1971 - the Soviet programme did not compare well. With NASA planning to send twin landers to Mars at the 1975 launch window, the Soviets hoped that the capabilities provided by Groza would give them a chance to catch up, and perhaps surpass, US accomplishments.
In 1970, Georgy Babakin at NPO Lavochkin directed his engineers to start designing a Mars sample return probe, using the N-1 as the launch vehicle. This would follow on from the successful Luna-16 mission that returned samples from the Moon in September 1970, but would be much larger in mass, duration and complexity. The Mars 5NM sample return probe would have a starting mass in low Earth orbit of a whopping 98 tonnes. The 16 tonne lander was too heavy to rely upon parachutes, and so after using a deployable shield to aerobrake from interplanetary speeds, four rocket engines would be used to perform an automated thrust-borne soft-landing on the surface. A two-stage return rocket would put the 750kg cruise stage into Mars orbit, where it would wait up to ten months for the planets to align before starting its journey home. Finally, a 15kg return capsule would plummet through Earth’s atmosphere to deliver its payload of Martian soil to the waiting scientists. After a three year voyage, that 98 tonne probe would have brought back 200 grammes of Mars dust.
Recognising the complexity of this mission profile, Babakin proposed to first test some of the key technologies with a simpler, though still impressive, mission to land a rover on Mars. Called Mars-4NM, this would use the same deployable aeroshell and rocket powered descent as 5NM, but the payload would instead be a modification of the Lunokhod rovers that had been the first wheeled vehicles on the Moon.
Originally intended to launch in the 1973 opportunity, the teething problems experienced by Groza, as well as difficulties in developing the probe, delayed the launch, and the probe - now named Mars 8[2] - lifted off on 12th September 1975 on Groza launch N1-11L. The launch and Earth departure were successful, but contact was lost with the probe three months later, before it reached the Red Planet. The cause was never found, but was assumed to be a failure of the electronics systems, and the back-up probe on Earth was subjected to additional testing with the hope of launching a repeat of the mission during the 1977 launch window.
[1] Based upon an
OTL news piece from St Louis local TV, interviewing
Michael Mackowski
of the Space Frontier Society in 1987 about the Mir space station. However, the opinion that US spaceflight is mired in technical and political problems is pretty much evergreen.
[2] IOTL the Mars series ended with Mars 7, which launched in 1973. The spacecraft made a successful flyby of Mars, but unfortunately so did the lander, which missed the Martian atmosphere and continued on into space. IOTL, no other Mars missions were launched by the USSR until 1988, with the twin Phobos probes. These also mostly failed, with only the Phobos 2 orbiter partially meeting its objectives before going silent. Russia tried to break the hoodoo in 2011 with Fobos-Grunt, but this mission was left stranded in Earth orbit when its upper stage failed.
So rest assured, the TTL end of the USSR won’t be a cut-and-paste of OTL, just with Groza instead of Energia.
