Word: soyuz
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Trouble struck the Soyuz TM-5 spacecraft soon after it left the Soviet orbiting space station Mir and started on its way home. The cosmonauts had just completed a six-day mission in which they performed routine experiments with the two Mir cosmonauts, who are spending a year in space. Lyakhov, 47, and Mohmand, 29, an Afghan pilot, had returned to the two-stage Soyuz capsule for the three-hour trip back to the Soviet Union, leaving Physician Valeri Polyakov behind to continue monitoring the health of the station crew...
...successfully completed the separation from Mir early Tuesday morning, then crawled into the cramped re-entry vehicle and jettisoned the compartment of the Soyuz craft that contained toilet facilities and living space. They had just settled in to await the firing of the computer-controlled rocket that was programmed to decelerate the spacecraft from its orbital speed for the descent into the atmosphere. Accounts of what happened next differ, but indications are that as the ship passed through a twilight region of space between day and night, an infrared sensor, which fixes the spacecraft's position in relation to earth...
Even so, there are other, more formidable barriers. Past cooperative space ventures have been closely tied to politics. The 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, for example, sprang from an earlier era of detente. The costly linkup between the orbiting U.S. and Soviet capsules (price tag: $300 million) was promoted to test compatible docking systems but had little scientific value: the flight was the last for the Apollo program. Prospects for more joint missions disappeared in December 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. "These missions start for policy reasons and stop for political reasons," says Nancy Lubin, a Government expert...
...report was dramatic: he had suffered virtually no ill effects from his prolonged flight. In the past, Soviet cosmonauts have returned from long missions with bones, muscles and cardiovascular systems weakened by extended periods in zero gravity. But Romanenko claimed he could stand up, albeit shakily, shortly after his Soyuz capsule touched down in Soviet Kazakhstan on Dec. 29. Said he: "My muscles were strong enough to support me. As far as heart palpitations, sweating, that sort of thing -- I didn't feel anything of that sort. In fact, one day after returning to earth, I went for my first...
...orbiter was launched in February 1986, Soviet officials announced that it would eventually become the first permanently manned space station. Last week the Soviets moved a big step closer to that milestone. As part of the first complete crew change aboard the spacelab, three cosmonauts docked their Soyuz TM-4 craft with Mir, which had been occupied by a team of two since March...