Salyut 1 (1971): The First Space Station and Soyuz 11

Salyut 1 was the world’s first space station, launched by the Soviet Union on 19 April 1971. In June 1971 the three-man crew of Soyuz 11 lived and worked aboard it for 23 days, a new record for time in space. Their triumph ended in tragedy: on the way home their capsule lost its air, and all three died, the only people ever to die in space itself.

Background: from the Moon race to stations

By 1969 the United States had won the race to land people on the Moon with Apollo 11. The Soviet crewed lunar programme was struggling, and its N1 rocket had failed twice. Soviet leaders and engineers looked for a different goal where they could lead: a permanent human presence in Earth orbit.

Two space stations were already in development. Vladimir Chelomei’s design bureau was building Almaz, a military station for reconnaissance. In late 1969 and early 1970, engineers at the bureau founded by Sergei Korolev, then led by Vasily Mishin, won approval for a faster plan: a civilian Long-Duration Orbital Station (DOS) that would reuse Almaz hulls and existing Soyuz equipment.

The result was built in little more than a year. It was given the public name Salyut, meaning “salute”, in honour of the tenth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight.

The station

Salyut 1 weighed about 18.5 tonnes and was roughly 15–16 metres long. It had about 90–100 cubic metres of pressurised volume, far more than any spacecraft before it. Four solar panels supplied power, and a single docking port at the front received Soyuz ferry craft.

Inside, the station carried scientific instruments, including the Orion 1 ultraviolet telescope for observing stars, equipment for studying the human body in weightlessness and a small garden experiment. Living facilities were basic, but there was room for a crew to exercise, eat and sleep in relative comfort.

The station was launched unmanned on a Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Soyuz 10: the first attempt

Soyuz 10 lifted off just before midnight UTC on 22 April 1971, early on 23 April in Moscow. On board were Vladimir Shatalov, Aleksei Yeliseyev and Nikolai Rukavishnikov.

The spacecraft reached Salyut 1 on 24 April and made initial contact, but the docking mechanism failed to pull the two craft into a firm, airtight joint. After several hours the crew gave up, undocked and returned to Earth, landing in darkness in Kazakhstan. The probe and drogue system was modified for the next flight.

Soyuz 11: 23 days aboard

The next crew was meant to be Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space, with Valeri Kubasov and Pyotr Kolodin. A few days before launch, a shadow on Kubasov’s chest X-ray led doctors to ground him, and under the rules of the time the whole crew was replaced by its backups.

Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev launched on Soyuz 11 on 6 June 1971. They docked the following day and became the first crew to enter a space station. Over the next three weeks they carried out observations of Earth and space, medical tests and biological experiments, and appeared in television broadcasts watched across the Soviet Union.

Life aboard was not easy. Accounts based on the mission records describe tension between the crew and with ground control, and a serious electrical fault in mid-June that filled part of the station with smoke and led the crew to prepare for an emergency departure before it was brought under control. The cosmonauts nonetheless completed their programme and set an endurance record of almost 24 days in space.

The return and the disaster

The crew undocked on 29 June 1971. At about 168 kilometres altitude, the explosive bolts that separated the descent module from the orbital module fired together rather than in sequence. The shock jolted open a small pressure-equalisation valve that was supposed to open only near the ground.

Air rushed out of the cabin. Investigators concluded that the crew had tried to close the valve, but it took far longer to shut by hand than the time available. The cabin was emptied of air in well under a minute, and the three men lost consciousness and died within a couple of minutes.

The capsule’s automatic systems worked normally, and it landed gently in Kazakhstan early on 30 June Moscow time. When the recovery team opened the hatch, they found the crew dead in their seats. The cosmonauts were not wearing pressure suits, because the three-seat Soyuz had no room for them.

Consequences

The three cosmonauts received a state funeral in Moscow, and their ashes were placed in the Kremlin Wall. The American astronaut Thomas Stafford was among the pallbearers, a rare gesture during the Cold War.

The investigation led to lasting changes. Soyuz flew with only two cosmonauts, both wearing new Sokol pressure suits, until the redesigned Soyuz T restored three-seat crews in 1980. Wearing suits for launch, docking and landing has remained standard on Soyuz ever since.

No other crew reached Salyut 1. Controllers lowered its orbit, and it re-entered and burned up over the Pacific Ocean on 11 October 1971, after about 175 days in orbit.

The disaster also slowed the wider Soviet programme. A second civilian station of the same design was lost in a launch failure in July 1972, and no Soviet crew flew again until Soyuz 12 in September 1973, more than two years after Soyuz 11.

Myths and facts

Because Soviet secrecy hid many details at the time, rumours grew around the mission. One common claim is that the crew died from a sudden explosion or from a fault in the station itself. In fact the station played no part: the fatal failure happened in the Soyuz descent module after it had left Salyut 1.

Another misconception is that the cosmonauts were left to die by an unprepared ground team. The depressurisation began in space, out of radio contact with the ground for part of the descent, and nothing that controllers could have done would have saved the crew once the valve opened. The investigation instead blamed the design of the valve and the decision to fly without pressure suits.

Legacy

Despite its tragic end, Salyut 1 began the era of space stations. The Soviet Union launched a series of military and civilian Salyuts through the 1970s and early 1980s, culminating in Salyut 6 and Salyut 7, which had two docking ports and could be resupplied by cargo craft. These led to the modular Mir station and, in turn, to the International Space Station.

The United States followed with Skylab in 1973. Salyut 1 showed that people could live and work in orbit for weeks; Soyuz 11 showed how unforgiving the return could be.

Timeline

• 1971, 19 April: Salyut 1 is launched on a Proton rocket from Baikonur.
• 1971, 22–23 April: Soyuz 10 is launched with three cosmonauts.
• 1971, 24 April: Soyuz 10 reaches the station but cannot dock firmly and returns to Earth.
• 1971, 6 June: Soyuz 11 is launched with Dobrovolsky, Volkov and Patsayev.
• 1971, 7 June: The Soyuz 11 crew docks and enters Salyut 1.
• 1971, 29–30 June: The crew undocks and dies when the descent module depressurises during the return.
• 1971, 11 October: Salyut 1 re-enters the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.

Why it matters

Salyut 1 was the first home for humans in space and the ancestor of every station since. The loss of the Soyuz 11 crew made pressure suits standard for launch and landing and remains a reminder of the risks of spaceflight.