Word: orbiter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...resulted in the first human deaths in space-had recorded a series of major achievements. For nearly 24 days, the three cosmonauts had whirled around the earth in their huge, 175¾-ton Salyut space station performing scientific experiments, bantering with mission control, and even celebrating a birthday in orbit. On board both the Salyut and the attached Soyuz shuttle craft, all systems seemed to function flawlessly. Thus last week, when the cosmonauts were ordered to transfer to Soyuz and return to earth, there was little cause for apprehension...
...mission commander, Lieut. Colonel Dobrovolsky, 43, reported that the undocking from the larger ship was uneventful. Then, after orienting their ship at the proper angle the cosmonauts fired Soyuz's main rocket to slow the ship down, drop it out of orbit and send it back into the earth's atmosphere. The rocket functioned perfectly. At the end of the burn, however, there was an ominous development. Long minutes before the radio blackout that always occurs as a returning spacecraft is enveloped by hot, ionized gases, Soyuz 11 unexpectedly lapsed into silence...
...cosmonauts climbed back into Soyuz, taking the films, logbooks and other scientific data accumulated in three weeks aloft. Typically, Russian space officials made no prior announcement of the flight's impending end. On the contrary, there had been hints all along that the cosmonauts might stay in orbit as long as a month. If there were reasons to foreshorten the mission, however, they were apparently not medical. Only a few days before, Soviet doctors had reported that except for slight fatigue, the trio were in exceptionally good health. Thus, when disaster struck, it was totally unexpected. "None...
...Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died in 1967 when Soyuz 1 crashed to earth after its descent-parachute shrouds tangled at the end of a 17-orbit mission. Only three months earlier, Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaftee were killed when a flash fire engulfed their Apollo 1 spacecraft during a simulated launch at Cape Kennedy...
...with an externally mounted TV camera. They also fired the space station's main engine, an operation accompanied by what Dobrovolsky described as "a very bright flash with a large number of white particles, like a snow blizzard." After two firings, they managed to raise Salyut's orbit to 161 by 175 miles. That increased elevation should give the space station at least another month's life-enough time for other Soyuz spacecraft to dock with...