Soyuz T-15

•   Leonid Kizim (3 flights) - commander
•   Vladimir Solovyov (2 flights) - flight engineer

This is the first expedition to the Mir space station . The astronauts also visited the Salyut-7 orbiting station.

Docking with the World

The expedition delivered the first two astronauts to the Mir station. Initially it was supposed to dock the Soyuz T-15 with the front port of the Mir station, leaving aft for the Progress cargo ship. However, all the ships of the Soyuz T series were equipped with the Igla approach system, and the Mira forward port was equipped with the Kurs system. Therefore, the Soyuz T-15 approached the station from behind. At 20 km, the crew began docking along the “needle” in the stern. At 200 meters, the Igla was turned off, and the crew of the ship manually maneuvered to the front port and made docking, using the same laser finder that the Soyuz T-13 used to dock with the Salyut-7 in 1985 .

Fly to Salyut-7

To prepare for the trip to Salyut-7, which was about 4000 km away from Mira in a lower orbit , the astronauts transferred personal belongings, plants grown in Mira and other necessary things to Soyuz T-15. On May 4, the Mira orbit was reduced by 13 km in order to speed up the flight to Salyut-7 and save limited fuel reserves on the Soyuz T-15. Soyuz T-15 separated from Mira when Salyut-7 was 2500 km. The flight took 29 hours. On May 5— 6, astronauts switched to Salyut-7, where they performed two spacewalks , collected experimental results, research instruments and material samples.

Spacewalks

Vasiutin 's illness, an astronaut from the previous crew of Salyut-7, led then to the suspension of work on the orbital station. In view of this, the expedition did not have any spacewalks, which were also important for the Mir program, which complicated the mission of the expedition on the Soyuz T-15. On May 28 and 31, the crew of the Soyuz T-15 went into outer space, where he conducted an experiment on the deployment of a transformable Mayak farm and welding experiments.

To experiment with a farm at the Institute of Electric them. E. O. Paton created a device for expanding and collapsing a truss (URS) in the form of a tank in which the truss was folded. Deployment could be done in automatic, semi-automatic and manual modes. During the first spacewalk, the astronauts installed a stand in front of the Salyut-7, on which they placed the URS and tested this device. During the second exit at a length of 12 m, a farm was deployed with a luminous beacon installed on its end. A television camera pointed at it recorded the swing of the farm. An equipment was also installed to record the invisible visual movements of the farm. Data from the end of the farm was transmitted to the station via optical fiber . This output also tested the brazing and welding of parts of the truss using an electron beam generated by a universal hand tool, first tested by the 4th Salyut-7 visiting expedition ^[1] . The first exit lasted 3 hours 50 minutes, the second - 5 hours. After completion of the program, the team mothballed Salyut-7.

Return to the "World"

The astronauts returned aboard the Mira on June 25—26 . They transferred 20 devices with a total weight of 350-400 kg from the Salyut-7 to the Mir. On June 24–25, Mir made two maneuvers: it slightly raised its orbit and flew closer to Salyut-7. On June 25, the Soyuz T-15 undocked from the Salyut-7 and began a 29-hour flight to Mir. On July 3, Leonid Kizim broke Valery Ryumin 's record for being in space. On July 6, he became the first man to spend a year in space on aggregate time. The last 20 days on the “World” cosmonauts have been studying the surface of the Earth .

The fate of Salyut-7 station

By August 22, 1986, Cosmos-1686 and the station's engines lifted the preserved orbital complex into orbit with a maximum height of 492 km and a minimum of 474 km ^[2] , to prevent the station from entering the atmosphere . Here, tests of the units and systems of the complex, scientific experiments and development of methods for maintaining the spacecraft systems during long-term orbital operations were conducted. Due to high solar activity in 1990, the density of the upper atmosphere increased, and the station began to decline uncontrollably, falling in sparsely populated areas on the border of Chile and Argentina .

• The first in the world space expedition with flight between space stations.
• The second in the world space expedition with docking with an unguided station ^[3] .
• Space expedition with double flight between stations (“Mir” → “Salyut-7” → “Mir”).
• The ship consisted of a re-used descent module from the Soyuz T-10-1 emergency ship, taken away from the launch pad by the emergency rescue system during a launch vehicle fire on September 26, 1983 ^[4] .

• Extra-space activities of astronauts (table)
• Spacecraft "Soyuz" series
• Cosmonautics History

• Spacecraft "Soyuz T-15"
• Flights of the Soyuz spacecraft
• The film "" Salyut-7 "and" World ". Expedition to two stations, Centrnauchfilm, 1986