【Military Sub-Plane】Author: Red Starry Sky
On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, and the Soviet Union lost in this space race, but the Soviets did not give up, and the subsequent salute series won back a point for the Soviets. Among them, Salyut 7, which was launched in 1982, was the largest space station at that time, capable of implementing many scientific experiments, and it can be said that it carries the top technology and honor of the Soviet Union. However, there was an unexpected storm in the universe, and on February 11, 1985, the main radio transmitter of Salyut VII was shut down! At first, the ground control center thought that it was no big deal, this was tripping, and it was good to restart it (@network management). What I didn't expect was that it couldn't be restarted, and Salyut No. 7 was inexplicably lost! Engineers speculated that there was a problem with the Salyut 7 receivers, most likely an overall power outage. If this is the case, the space station should have frozen into an ice hole, maybe it was caused by a short circuit, then the battery pack should also be burned, what to do? The Soviets showed their fearless fighting spirit and sent two astronauts to the space maintenance space station! The film "Space Rescue" tells this story.
Why is it so difficult to repair this space station? First of all, Salyut 7 is in an unmanned state, and can even be counted as a large space "scrap", and the Soyuz spacecraft can only dock with it by pilot manual operation. Many friends may think that manual docking is not very simple, many modern astronauts can do it. Now we often say that manual docking is that both spacecraft that are docked can receive signals, and the astronaut manually controls and coordinates with computer adjustments. For the Soyuz spacecraft, it must be manually synchronized with Salyut 7, how difficult is this? So far, the only successful docking with non-cooperative spacecraft has been achieved this time.
In fact, the Soviet Union sent people to repair it was a risk, because what kind of posture the out-of-control Salyut 7 was in was not clear, and if the spacecraft arrived and found that the Salyut 7 was flipping, it would have to go back home, because even today's spacecraft control technology could not achieve docking. The most terrible situation is that Salyut 7 is only a broken launcher, there is no power outage, because Salyut 7 has the function of automatically correcting the attitude, and when it finds that there is a spacecraft disturbance, it will automatically adjust the attitude. With these uneasiness, the Soyuz approached Salyut 7, and the astronauts were fortunate to find that Salyut 7 was floating in orbit in a normal rolling posture, and they successfully completed the docking.
After the astronauts entered Salyut 7, they found that it was particularly cold inside, and the ground control center instructed the astronauts to spit on the saliva, and the saliva solidified within three seconds, it can be said that the temperature has dropped to zero degrees, of course, this is expected. With no oxygen-producing equipment, carbon dioxide from the space station gradually accumulated, so one astronaut had to return to Soyuz to monitor the vital signs of another astronaut. After docking, they had 8 days of supplies left, and the first thing to rescue was the battery pack of Salyut 7. Since Salyut 7 was short-circuited, the astronauts did not dare to connect the power supply on the Soyuz, so the two men used flashlights in the black ice cave to rewire the short-circuited space station battery pack, which took a few days, and finally miraculously repaired six of the eight batteries!
The astronauts returned to soyuz and manually controlled the rotation of the space station so that the solar sails were aligned with the sun and the co-battery pack was charged. After the space station restored power, they repaired the ventilation and air conditioning systems, and the astronauts also made a hot fast to heat up the water supply system. At this point, their supplies had bottomed out and they had to tighten their belts to wait for rescue. At this time, the Progress supply spacecraft arrived in time and successfully docked with Salyut 7, and they successfully saved Salyut 7! The two astronauts then worked in space for more than a hundred days before returning to Earth, and they successfully gave Salyut 7 another 7 years! Finally, I asked the editor to pay tribute to two Soviet heroes, namely Commander Vladimir Janibekov and space station engineer Victor Savinikh.
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