Misplaced Pages

Soyuz T-12

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

Soyuz T-12 (also known as Salyut 7 EP-4 ) was the seventh crewed spaceflight to the Soviet space station Salyut 7 . The name "Soyuz T-12" is also the name of the spacecraft used to launch and land the mission's three-person crew. The mission occurred in July 1984, during the long-duration expedition Salyut 7 EO-3 . During the mission, crew member Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to ever perform a spacewalk , and the potential Buran space shuttle pilot, Igor Volk , was given spaceflight experience. Unlike many Soyuz visiting missions, the Soyuz lifeboats were not swapped, and the crew returned to Earth in the same spacecraft in which they launched.

#475524

24-453: Igor Volk was a test pilot , and was planned to be the commander of the first Buran spaceflight. The rule introduced following the Soyuz 25 failure insisted that all Soviet spaceflight must have at least one crew member who has been to space before. As a result, it was decided that Volk should have spaceflight experience, and he was originally scheduled to visit Salyut 7 in 1983. But following

48-658: A Yak-18T aircraft (November 12, 1991 - February 2, 1992). On 21 November 2013, he signed an open letter to the President criticizing the United Aircraft Corporation and its leader Mikhail Pogosyan for curtailing the program for the production of the Tu-334 aircraft. Also, in this letter, the Superjet project is directly criticized. In May 2016, Volk supported the program of environmentalists in

72-615: A 3 hr, 30 min EVA (Savitskaya became the first woman ever to perform an EVA), during which they tested the URI multipurpose tool. They cut, welded, soldered, and coated metal samples. During the Pamirs' stay, the six cosmonauts aboard Salyut 7 also conducted Rezonans tests and collected station air samples. Igor Volk Igor Petrovich Volk ( Russian : Игорь Петрович Волк , Ukrainian : Ігор Петрович Волк ; 12 April 1937 – 3 January 2017)

96-734: A designated point, the engines were shut down and the OK-GLI glided back to land. This provided valuable test data about the handling characteristics of the Buran design. The powered-engine approach significantly differed from the carrier plane/air drop method used by the US and the Enterprise test craft. Until the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, seven cosmonauts were allocated to the Buran programme. All had experience as test pilots and flew on

120-598: A static tourist attraction under a large temporary structure in Darling Harbour for a few years. Upon reassembly, the OK-GLI was put on display in a temporary enclosure for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. Visitors could walk around and inside the vehicle (a walkway was built along the cargo bay), and plans were in place for a tour of various cities in Australia and Asia. The owners went into bankruptcy after

144-579: A team of German journalists found the OK-GLI in Bahrain, having been abandoned after it was on display as an attraction of the 2002 "Bahrain Summer" festival. It was then bought by the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum , to be transported to Germany in 2005. Due to legal issues, it remained in Bahrain for several years, pending settlement of an international court case over fees. On 4 March 2008

168-642: The British Interplanetary Society magazine Spaceflight , to ask why a test pilot was occupying a Soyuz seat usually reserved for researchers or foreign cosmonauts. After his orbital flight, Volk served as the head of pilot-cosmonaut training department for the Buran program and later (after the project's cancellation) worked for the Gromov Flight Research Institute as a Flight Tests Deputy Chief before retiring in 1996. He previously served as President of

192-716: The Buran vehicles by the Soviet Union began in the late 1970s as a response to the Space Shuttle program of the United States. The construction of the orbiters began in 1980, and by 1984 the first full-scale Buran was rolled out. The first suborbital test flight of a scale-model took place as early as July 1983. As the project progressed, five additional scale-model flights were performed. The OK-GLI (Buran Analog BST-02) test vehicle ("Buran aerodynamic analogue")

216-742: The National Aero Club of Russia and Vice President of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale . As recognition for his contributions as a test pilot and cosmonaut he was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union on 29 July 1984. Since April 1990, Volk has been a member of the editorial board of the Wings of the Motherland magazine. He participated in the transcontinental flight Moscow - Canberra - Moscow on

240-487: The 7th expedition to Salyut 7 , one goal of the mission was to evaluate the effects of long-duration spaceflight on a pilot's skills and ability to fly and land an aeroplane safely (in order to prove Volk's ability to control Space Shuttle Buran atmospheric segment of flight). At the time of the Soyuz T-12 mission, the Buran program was still a state secret. The appearance of Volk as a crew member caused some, including

264-747: The Bykovskoye Memorial Cemetery in Zhukovsky . Bust of Igor Volk is installed at Solnechnaya Street in the city of Zhukovsky . OK-GLI The OK-GLI ( Russian : Орбитальный корабль для горизонтальных лётных испытаний, ОК-ГЛИ , romanized :  Orbital'nyy korabl' dlya gorizontal'nykh lotnykh ispytaniy , lit.   'Orbital ship for horizontal flight tests'), also known as Buran Analog BTS-02 ( Russian : БТС-02, Большой транспортный самолёт второй , romanized :  bolshoi transportny samolyot vtoroi , lit.   'big transport aircraft,

SECTION 10

#1732772769476

288-480: The OK-GLI began its journey by sea to the Technik Museum Speyer where it was refurbished and serves as a walk-in exhibit. The journey got off to an inauspicious start when, during the transfer from the storage barge to the ship, there was a failure of the aft spreader (part of the lifting mechanism) and the tail of the vehicle dropped from just above deck height to the bottom of the hold . No one

312-475: The OK-GLI test vehicle. They were: Ivan Bachurin , Alexei Borodai , Anatoli Levchenko , Aleksandr Shchukin , Rimantas Stankevičius , Igor Volk and Viktor Zabolotsky . In total, nine taxi tests and twenty-five test flights of the OK-GLI were performed, after which the vehicle was "worn out". All tests and flights were carried out at the Zhukovsky Air Base, outside Moscow. After the program

336-548: The Olympics, and the vehicle was moved into the open air and stored for a year in a fenced-in parking lot and protected by nothing more than a large tarpaulin, where it suffered deterioration and repeated vandalism. The OK-GLI was then offered for sale, including by a radio auction on the American News 980 KFWB-AM with a starting price of US$ 6 million , however it did not receive any genuine bids. In September 2004

360-457: The Soyuz T-12 mission, achieving the first female spacewalk was more important than gaining experience for a potential Buran crew member. At the time of the mission the Buran program was still a state secret. The appearance of Volk as a crew member caused some, including the British Interplanetary Society magazine Spaceflight , to ask why a test pilot was occupying a Soyuz seat usually reserved for researchers or foreign cosmonauts. Soyuz T-12

384-578: The elections and primaries of United Russia in the Moscow Oblast. He actively supported the environmental projects of the EkoGrad magazine. Volk was an inventor. He also supported a number of startups like four-person concept flying car , etc. Volk was married and had two children. He died on 3 January 2017 while on holiday in Plovdiv , Bulgaria . He is buried together with his daughter at

408-719: The failure of Soyuz T-8 to dock to Salyut 7, in April 1983, the Soyuz launch schedule was disrupted, and Volk's original crew members, Kizim and Solovyov, were rescheduled elsewhere. They later became long-duration crew members of Salyut 7 EO-3 , and Volk was scheduled to fly in the passenger seat of the visiting mission Soyuz T-12 to the EO-3 crew, but the other members of the T-12 mission were not yet decided. In November 1983, NASA announced that during STS-41-G , Kathryn D. Sullivan would become

432-519: The first woman to perform a spacewalk. The NPO Energia chief decided that the Soviets would get there first, and assembled the Soyuz T-12 crew within a month of NASA's announcement, which included Volk as previously planned. The back-up crew lists became available to Western space analysts in 1988, and they noted that the back-up crew contained a woman, but did not contain another LII test pilot. Judging from this, it appeared that, as reasons to have

456-496: The second'), was a Soviet atmospheric test vehicle ("Buran aerodynamic analogue") of the orbital Buran spacecraft . It was constructed for the Buran programme in 1984, and was used for 25 test flights between 1985 and 1988 before being retired. The aircraft was subsequently put on exhibit in Australia (2000), Bahrain (2002) and since 2008 has been on exhibit at the Technik Museum Speyer in Germany. The development of

480-684: Was a Russian test pilot and former Soviet cosmonaut in the Buran programme . Volk became a pilot in the Soviet Air Forces in 1956. After graduation from the Fedotov Test Pilot School in 1965, he has joined the Gromov Flight Research Institute . He logged over 7000 flight hours in over 80 different aircraft types. Over the years, he flew on all types of Soviet fighters, bombers, and transport aircraft. He showed outstanding abilities in complex tests of various airplanes at critical angles of attack, stall, and spin. He

504-507: Was cancelled, the OK-GLI was stored at Gromov Flight Research Institute , near Moscow , where it was displayed during the annual MAKS air show . In 2000, the OK-GLI was sold to an Australian company called the Buran Space Corporation , owned by Australian astronaut Paul Scully-Power . It was disassembled and transported by ship to Sydney , Australia, via Gothenburg , Sweden; arriving on 9 February 2000 and appeared as

SECTION 20

#1732772769476

528-496: Was constructed in 1984. It was fitted with four AL-31 jet engines mounted at the rear (the fuel tank for the engines occupied a quarter of the cargo bay). This Buran could take off under its own power for flight tests, in contrast to the American Enterprise test vehicle, which was entirely unpowered and relied on an air launch. The jet engines were used to take off from a normal landing strip, and once it reached

552-555: Was the 7th expedition to Salyut 7 . Volk was a glimpse of things which might have been: he was a Buran programme program pilot being flown in space to prove he would be able to pilot Buran back to Earth after an extended stay in space. The crew of Soyuz T-12 (callsign Pamir), the second Visiting Expedition to visit the Mayaks , included veteran cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov, Buran shuttle program cosmonaut Igor Volk, and Svetlana Savitskaya. On July 25 Dzhanibekov and Savitskaya performed

576-544: Was the first who tested aircraft behavior at high super-critical angles of attack (around 90°) and performed aerobatics such as the " cobra " maneuver. Igor Volk was selected as a cosmonaut on 12 July 1977 and subsequently assigned to the Buran programme . As part of his preparations for a space shuttle flight, he also accomplished test-flights with Buran's counterpart OK-GLI aircraft. In July 1984, Volk flew aboard Soyuz T-12 , intended to give him some experience in space. With Volks's participation as research cosmonaut on

#475524