Fwd: The Unlucky Voyage of Soyuz 23

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: October 27, 2013 8:55:44 PM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: The Unlucky Voyage of Soyuz 23

 

 

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
October 26th, 2013 

A Watery Yarn: The Unlucky Voyage of Soyuz 23 (Part 1)

By Ben Evans

Artist's impression of the flashing beacon atop the Soyuz 23 descent module attracting the attention of a rescue helicopter. The spacecraft performed the Soviet Union's first (unintended) water splashdown in the icy Lake Tengiz. Image Credit: Joachim Becker / SpaceFacts.de

Scattered across the globe, from Australia to Iceland and Kamchatka to Chile, are almost two thousand unique sites, protected by the provisions of the 40-year-old Ramsar Convention. This intergovernmental treaty, signed in Iran back in February 1971, provided for national and international action to conserve and wisely exploit wetlands and their resources throughout the world. One of the so-called "Ramsar Sites" is an obscure salt lake called Tengiz, located in north-central Kazakhstan. It has an area of almost 540 square miles (1,400 square km), but is extremely shallow—even its deepest spots run to only a few metres. It has been identified as the home of around 300 different species of birds, two dozen of which are classified as endangered. Today, it forms part of the Korgalzhyn Nature Reserve, which was nominated a few years ago as Kazakhstan's first natural UNESCO World Heritage site. Over the millennia, Tengiz has provided a haven for many creatures. In October 1976, it even offered a temporary home for two travelers from outer space. They were returning with heavy hearts, for it had been their task, just two days earlier, to reinvigorate a home in space which had been abandoned by its previous occupants.

As summer cooled into autumn, very little comment had emerged from behind the Iron Curtain as to precisely why Soyuz 21 cosmonauts Boris Volynov and Vitali Zholobov had returned to Earth so abruptly from the military Salyut 5 space station in August 1976. Even Radio Moscow was caught by surprise when, on the morning of 24 August, they were told that the men would be on the ground in just 10 hours! The landing, which took place in darkness, underlined the need to get them home as quickly as possible. In its summing-up on 4 September, Flight International quoted a Russian daily newspaper, which revealed that psychologists had begun playing music to the crew "to ease the effects of prolonged isolation." At length, Aviation Week & Space Technology reported that Volynov and Zholobov had evacuated Salyut 5 following the development of an acrid odor in the station's atmosphere. This suspicion seemed to be vindicated in February 1977, when another crew—that of Soyuz 24—boarded Salyut, vented and replaced its atmosphere … and did so with their faces screened behind the safety of oxygen masks.

Sandwiched between Volynov's ill-fated mission and that of Soyuz 24, however, were two other flights, including Soyuz 23, which totally failed to dock with Salyut … but did earn its own place in history as the only time that a Russian cosmonaut team landed in water, rather than on land. Splashing down was, of course, unintentional, but many things occurred during the unlucky voyage of Soyuz 23 which were neither intended nor anticipated.

Commander Vyacheslav Zudov (left) and Flight Engineer Valeri Rozhdestvensky, clad in their pressure suits, are pictured with a Soyuz mockup during training. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker / SpaceFacts.de

In the years to come, Soviet policy toward the composition of each crew would change to always include at least one veteran cosmonaut. (On a number of occasions in the Mir and International Space Station eras, this requirement changed and several all-rookie Soyuz crews have flown.) This was in response to the fact that three all-rookie missions during this period became failures, in each case being forced to return to Earth after just a couple of days. On Soyuz 15 in August 1974, cosmonauts Gennadi Sarafanov and Lev Dyomin had almost collided with their station, and on Soyuz 25 in October 1977, cosmonauts Vladimir Kovalyonok and Valeri Ryumin failed in their effort to dock with the new Salyut 6. The third failed mission, Soyuz 23, has always held a special significance for this author, since it took place in the middle of October 1976, a few days before I was born. Crewed by Commander Vyacheslav Zudov and Flight Engineer Valeri Rozhdestvensky, it would similarly fail to link up with Salyut 5. In so doing, these two men would miss out on a long-duration flight which many in the West were confidently expecting would exceed Skylab's 84-day endurance record.

On launch morning, 14 October, little seemed to go well. The bus broke down on the way to the launch pad and then, after an otherwise flawless liftoff at 8:40 p.m. Moscow Time, high winds aloft caused the rocket to veer off-course and the crew narrowly avoided having to execute an abort. They achieved orbital insertion safely—albeit lower than planned—and ultimately established themselves at an altitude of around 168 miles (270 km), preparatory to docking late on the evening of 15 October. Four miles (7 km) from the station, Commander Zudov placed the Soyuz into its automatic rendezvous mode, but shortly afterward reported "strong lateral fluctuations" in his craft. With less than 0.9 miles (1.6 km) to go, he was becoming alarmed, for the fluctuations had now increased to the point at which Soyuz 23 was actually turning away from Salyut 5 … even though Zudov's instruments told him the approach was proceeding normally. At 1,600 feet (500 meters) out, both men could see the target, but instinctively knew that they were still inexplicably turning away from it and were travelling too fast, anyway, for a successful docking to be attempted.

At length, the Soyuz ceased its oscillations and Zudov asked to make a second try. However, the lower-than-normal orbital insertion had already required him to expend a significant proportion of his attitude control propellant, and mission controllers knew that sufficient reserves had to be maintained for two attempts at retrofire. The cosmonauts protested that they felt confident that a second docking attempt would succeed, but were out of luck. There was nothing left to do but come home, disappointed and disheartened, the following day. One of the greatest surprises was that the Soviets actually admitted to the press that the mission had failed, telling journalists in the elaborately roundabout and irritatingly indirect manner for which they had become famous that the docking of Soyuz 23 with the station "was cancelled because of an unplanned operation of the approach control system of the ship."

Translation? Zudov and Rozhdestvensky's craft had let them down. Their mission had only just started, and yet its real difficulties were barely beginning. 

 

 

Copyright © 2013 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

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AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
October 27th, 2013 

A Watery Yarn: The Unlucky Voyage of Soyuz 23 (Part 2)

By Ben Evans

 

Soyuz 23′s descent module and deflated parachute are hoisted from the icy waters of Lake Tengiz. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker / SpaceFacts.de

Almost four decades ago, in the "deep cold" of the Cold War, a number of space missions launched by the Soviet Union to dock with early Salyut space stations failed to accomplish their objectives. Another was forced to terminate its flight earlier than planned, due to problems with the station's environmental control system. In October 1976, Soyuz 23 cosmonauts Vyacheslav Zudov and Valeri Rozhdestvensky thundered into orbit to occupy the military Salyut 5 outpost … and quickly ran into difficulties. Strong lateral oscillations, together with a lower than planned orbit and overexpenditure of attitude-control propellant, forced mission controllers to order the crew to abort the mission. The troubles of Soyuz 23, however, were only just beginning.

It is at this stage of the mission that Lake Tengiz—a large salt lake in Kazakhstan—becomes pertinent. The nature of Tengiz was discussed in yesterday's history article. Aboard Soyuz 23, Zudov and Rozhdestvensky performed their "retrofire" burn normally and were aware that high winds and blizzards were making conditions in the primary recovery zone dicey. Little could they have realised that those gusts would carry them no less than 75 miles (120 km) from the intended landing point. Moreover, as they descended, their capsule was enveloped by a thick blanket of freezing fog, and the only sensation was that of gently swinging beneath the parachute.

Zudov told Rozhdestvensky to brace himself for the firing of the solid-fueled retrorockets at the point of touchdown … but both men were more than a little surprised when their epic journey ended, not with a hard thud, but with a loud splash.

Cosmonauts Zudov (right) and Rozhdestvensky spent 1.5 hours trying to writhe and cut themselves out of their pressure suits. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker / SpaceFacts.de

They had come down into the icy waters of Tengiz, about 5 miles (8 km) off its northern shore. As the parachute dragged the capsule, it floated on its side and this prevented the cosmonauts from opening the forward hatch, lest they admit a flood of freezing water. Outside temperatures were minus 22 degrees Celsius. With only a two-hour supply of oxygen remaining in their suits, Zudov and Rozhdestvensky were relieved to find that the pressure equalization vent of their capsule was just above the waterline. They opened it. They were aware that it would only sustain them for five hours or so, but were not overly concerned, because they were convinced that recovery forces would be with them promptly.

The two men removed their pressure suits, donned their flight suits and began tucking into their food rations. "To stay in such situation in the suits and do nothing," Zudov later recalled, "we would be frozen and die. That's why, first, we had to get out of space suits and to free ourselves of them. We spent an hour and a half to get out … even used knives to cut them, then we managed to wear our plain sport wear." The recovery forces, though, were having their own difficulties simply spotting the floating capsule. Splashdown had occurred at 8:46 p.m. Moscow Time on 15 October 1976, in darkness, and the steadily thickening fog had all but obscured the capsule's light beacon from the rescue helicopters.

If it was possible for circumstances to worsen at this point, they did. Salt corrosion activated the pyrotechnic charges for Soyuz 23's reserve parachute, causing it to deploy … and instantly fill with icy water! Tengiz is not a deep lake by any standards, reaching barely 20 feet (7 meters) at most, but with the pressure equalization vent open, the cosmonauts would have drowned if their craft had slipped underwater.

Zudov and Rozhdestvensky's survival training took over at this stage. In order to conserve their remaining oxygen, they stopped talking and moving, which compounded the rescuers' efforts even further, since they had difficulty establishing communication with the men and had no search signal upon which to focus.

Artist's impression of the flashing beacon atop the Soyuz 23 descent module attracting the attention of a rescue helicopter. The spacecraft performed the Soviet Union's first (unintended) water splashdown in the icy Lake Tengiz. Image Credit: Joachim Becker / SpaceFacts.de

At length, a lone helicopter spotted Soyuz 23 by chance and pinpointed its location with a powerful searchlight. Iosif Davydov, a survival training expert and one of the helicopter crew, told the cosmonauts to don their water survival suits. The heat of re-entry had quickly cooled the exterior of the capsule and, within the tiny cabin, the temperature began to fall rapidly and ice started to form on the walls. Outside, the first flurries of snow flickered downwards from an ominous, fog-enshrouded sky. Davydov readied himself to be winched down to the capsule, but the gathering snowstorm prevented the pilot from holding the helicopter in a sufficiently stable position. A second attempt to hover above Soyuz 23 also failed, and the would-be rescuers were forced to retreat to the shore.

Progress to reach Zudov and Rozhdestvensky was agonisingly slow and many spectators doubted that the men would still be alive by the time they were extracted from the descent module. Amphibious vehicles arrived at the lakeside, but could not negotiate its many bogs and marshes, and even the deployment of life rafts was hampered by the blocks of ice and sludge on Tengiz' surface. The rescuers had no options but to withdraw until first light the next morning, 17 October. Zudov and Rozhdestvensky would have to wait out the discomfort and the cold. To do so, they first had to switch off all internal power, to preserve the 40-minute limit to its on-board electrical supply, and the cosmonauts spent the night with just a tiny light for company.

Within two hours, listeners could hear clear signs of oxygen starvation in the men's voices—they were breathing heavily, then spoke in unusually hoarse tones, and at other times were virtually incoherent—and at one stage, as dawn approached, Rozhdestvensky reported that Zudov had lost consciousness. Exhaled carbon dioxide was steadily accumulating. "You could feel the CO₂ without any instrumentation," the flight engineer explained later of those harrowing hours spent alone, "just feel it. When I felt that we could lose consciousness … then I switched on the regeneration unit. When the mind started to clear, and blue haloes we were starting to see disappeared in the eyes, I switched it off … and so on, all through the night!"

Not everyone was prepared to wait for first light. A handful of intrepid rescuers set out into the icy expanse of Tengiz in rubber boats, and one of them, a helicopter pilot named Nikolai Chernavsky, succeeded in reaching the capsule. There was little that he could do, however, for Rozhdestvensky would later liken the surface of the water to "a salted quagmire." As the first glimmers of a wintry dawn shone over the lake, the cosmonauts turned on their exterior lights. With temperatures hovering around minus 20 degrees Celsius, exterior conditions were still severe, but had improved somewhat during the night. A rescue helicopter finally arrived on the scene, but because it was impractical to open the hatch, the only option was to tow the capsule to the shore—an untested and hazardous procedure.

"It was a difficult operation," wrote Rex Hall and Dave Shayler in their book, Soyuz: A Universal Spacecraft, "as the helicopter was nearly dragged down by the reserve parachute when it emerged from the water. The towing caused severe buffeting during a demanding 45-minute trip for both the helicopter crew and for the cosmonauts in the capsule." Not far from the shore, Zudov and Rozhdestvensky came close to suffocating when Soyuz 23 nearly sank, but at long last, 11 hours after hitting the icy waters of Tengiz, they were back on dry land. At 7 a.m. Moscow Time, the electrifying news was relayed to mission controllers and to the press: against all the odds, the crew was alive!

In the days that followed, the sheer terror of what they had endured became truly apparent. For Valeri Rozhdestvensky, the greatest terror did not come from the hours spent inside the cramped confines of the Soyuz … but from a handful of photographs which he saw afterward. "When I got to see our photos and how they dragged the capsule," he related, "then I really was frightened … the only time in my life I was really frightened."

The joy of having survived the ordeal was quickly tempered by concern, however, for the cosmonauts had failed in their attempt to dock with and reoccupy Salyut 5. In the days that followed, Zudov and Rozhdestvensky were blamed for not attempting a second docking, and an investigation focused attention on the large oscillations in the signals from the "Igla" ("Needle") rendezvous device. "It was determined that when the spacecraft had acquired the Salyut," continued Hall and Shayler, "the lateral movement light in the cabin came on, indicating that all such motion had ceased. However, as the engines used to stop lateral motion were not turned on, the spacecraft continued to swing around."

The crew had felt the motions, but Zudov's instruments told him that they were stationary. He knew that if he abandoned the final approach, there would be insufficient fuel reserves for a second attempt and therefore waited until the last possible moment before making his decision. In the final report, dated 2 December 1976, it was concluded that the indicator lights on Zudov's panel had recorded an accurate approach, and it was indeed the Igla which had erred. Armen Mnatsakanyan, Igla's designer, was offered the chance to resign. When he refused to do so, he was fired in January 1977, only weeks before the next Soyuz crew—Viktor Gorbatko and Yuri Glazkov—were set to put two bitter doses of bad luck behind them and finally bring some much-needed success to Salyut 5.

 

This article has been drawn from AT HOME IN SPACE, the third volume of my six-volume History of Human Space Exploration (1961-2011) series, published by Springer-Praxis.

 

Copyright © 2013 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

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