{"id":1430,"date":"2013-04-03T05:56:56","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T09:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/?p=1430"},"modified":"2013-04-03T06:00:35","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T10:00:35","slug":"the-mystery-of-salyut-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/the-mystery-of-salyut-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mystery of Salyut 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forty years ago today — April 3, 1973 — the USSR launched Salyut 2 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Proton K rocket.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Line drawing of an Almaz space station. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)<\/em><\/p>\n

According to the National Space Science Data Center, Salyut 2<\/a> “was designed for scientific research and testing of onboard systems and units” and failed “11 days after launch [due to] an unexplainable accident.”<\/p>\n

The Wikipedia entry<\/a> tells a different story: that Salyut 2 was one of the Soviet Union’s Almaz modules — a space station designed for military use, in answer to the USAF’s proposed Manned Orbiting Laboratory — and the first of the Almaz units to reach orbit. The station’s true purpose was hidden in plain sight by its being designated as a Salyut module.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia also includes an explanation for the Almaz\/Salyut’s failure:<\/p>\n

Three days after the launch of Salyut 2, the Proton’s spent third stage exploded. Thirteen days into its mission, Salyut 2 began to depressurise, and its attitude control system malfunctioned. An inquiry into the failure initially determined that a fuel line had burst, burning a hole in the station. It was later discovered that a piece of debris from the third stage had collided with the station, causing the damage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The source for the additional Salyut 2 information is this Russian Space Web page<\/a>, which also notes that<\/p>\n

Soon after the accident, official Soviet sources announced that the Salyut-2 had completed its operations “after a series of tests.” For years, official Soviet sources continued to claim that “during entire flight (of Salyut-2) reliable radio-contact with the station had been maintained … and all onboard systems and science equipment of the station had functioned normally.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forty years ago today — April 3, 1973 — the USSR launched Salyut 2 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Proton K rocket. (Line drawing of an Almaz space station. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.) According to the National Space Science Data Center, Salyut 2 “was designed for scientific research \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[26,11,22,123],"class_list":["post-1430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","category-space","tag-launch","tag-space-history","tag-space-station","tag-usaf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1430"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1434,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions\/1434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}