This week in rocket history, we look back at the launch of Salyut 3.

One of the major features of Almaz was a huge film capsule, which was returned at the end of the mission for analysis. The theory of operation was that, instead of launching a bunch of uncrewed satellites with cameras and limited film to undertake preset missions, a trained human crew could operate the camera in real-time. The crew could use their judgment and take pictures of interesting, even unknown military targets, without wasting film if an intended target was obscured by cloud cover. A human could also report findings in near real-time over radio instead of waiting literally weeks for a bucket of film to be used up, recovered, processed, and analyzed. For comparison, today’s satellites send back digital images that can be analyzed almost as soon as they are received. The limiting factor isn’t film or transmission time, but how often the satellite passes over an area.

Back to Salyut 3: the first mission to the new station was Soyuz 14, which was named Berkut or “Golden Eagle”. It was launched on July 3, 1974, at 18:51 UTC. Onboard were commander Pavel Popovich and engineer Yuri Artyukin. It used the new Soyuz-T spacecraft, which was specifically developed to transport crew to the new Salyut and Almaz stations.

One of the major differences between the contemporary Soyuz and the new Soyuz-T was the removal of the pair of solar panels as the spacecraft could receive power from the station itself. The weight reduction allowed the addition of equipment needed to control the station remotely from the Soyuz and new parachutes.

Soyuz 14 successfully docked with Salyut 3 on its fifteenth orbit, or just less than a day after launch. Once onboard they began their super-secret mission, which mainly consisted of determining if crewed orbital reconnaissance was worthwhile through operating the numerous cameras on the station.

The two crew also did medical tests to further their knowledge of the effects of prolonged spaceflight on the human body. In total, the crew spent fifteen days, seventeen hours and thirty minutes in space.

Soyuz 14 was Yuri’s only flight and Pavel’s last flight.

Soyuz 15 was the second mission sent to Salyut 3. It carried Lev Dyomin and Gennadi Sarafanov. It failed to dock to Salyut 3 after its rendezvous radar failed, and it didn’t have enough fuel for multiple manual docking attempts. To ensure that there was enough propellant for safe reentry, the capsule was brought down after only two days in space.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to fix the radar in the next capsule before the station also ran out of maneuvering propellant, so the station was intentionally deorbited over the Pacific ocean. The radar in that next capsule was eventually repaired, and the craft flew to a later Salyut station.

Prior to Salyut 3’s deorbit, ground controllers commanded a 23-mm Nudelman aircraft cannon mounted on the aft of Salyut 3 to fire on January 24, 1975. Yes, they fired a gun in space. Why did they fire a gun in space? To make sure it worked in case there was a need to defend Soviet space stations from American spacecraft interfering with its intelligence mission.

As far as we know, this is the only time something like this has been mounted on a space station and actually fired.

More Information

Soyuz 14 (Astronautix)

Soyuz 15 (Astronautix)

More Details for 1974-06-24 (Astronautix)

Almaz OPS (Astronautix)

Popovich, Pavel Romanovich (Astronautix)

Artyukhin, Yuri Petrovich (Astronautix)

Demin, Lev Stepanovich (Astronautix)

Sarafanov, Gennadi Vasiliyevich (Astronautix)