Ups and Downs for June

[GordonD]

26 JUNE

 

1991 Soyuz TM-11 landing

Crew: Viktor Afanisiyev (CDR); Musa Manarov (FE); Helen Sharman [United Kingdom] (RC)

Landing site: 68 km SE of Dzheskasgan

 

Afanasiyev and Manarov had been Mir Expedition 8; their flight time was 175d 1h 51m and 2,770 orbits. Helen Sharman, the first UK astronaut, had arrived on Mir aboard Soyuz TM-12 with the Expedition 9 crew: she had been in space for 7d 21h 14m and 124 orbits. She would go on to become the 'go to' spokesperson in the UK when comment was needed on developments in the space programme - at least until Tim Peake arrived on the scene.

 

 

2013 Shenzhou X landing

Crew: Nie Haisheng (CDR); Zhang Xiaoguang, Wang Yaping (Op)

Landing site: 42°19'44" N, 111°21'25.6" E (Inner Mongolia)

 

This had been Tiangong-1 Expedition 2 and lasted 14d 14h 29m, 229 orbits.

 

[GordonD]

27 JUNE

 

1978 Soyuz 30 launch

Crew: Pyotr Klimuk (CDR); Miroslaw Hermaszewski [Poland] (RC)

 

This was the second Interkosmos flight, docking with Salyut 6 the day after launch. The crew began joint work with the Expedition 2 team. Experiments included Earth-resources studies (as would become common on the international flights, concentrating on the guest cosmonaut's homeland) as well as materials science and crystal growth.

 

 

1982 STS-4 launch

Crew: Ken Mattingly (CDR); Henry Hartsfield (P)

 

Fourth Shuttle mission; fourth flight of Columbia

This was the final Shuttle development flight and the first to carry a classified payload, though it was later revealed that this had failed to operate. Other activities included tests of the manipulator arm and observations of lightning and thunderstorms from orbit.

 

 

1983 Soyuz T-9 launch

Crew: Vladimir Lyakhov (CDR); Aleksandr Aleksandrov (FE)

 

Salyut 7 Expedition 2. The cosmonauts carried out maintenance tasks which should have been performed by the Soyuz T-8 crew, which had failed to reach the station, including the installation of additional solar arrays. Two EVAs were conducted to achieve this: on 1 November, lasting 2h 50m and then two days later, lasting five minutes longer. The station suffered a serious malfunction when it was being refuelled from the Progress 17 freighter, when its main oxidiser line ruptured. This left Salyut's main propulsion system useless and the station had to rely on the engines of Progress craft to maintain its orbital altitude in future. There was further drama on 26 September when the launch vehicle of Soyuz T-10 caught fire during the final stages of countdown and the crew (Titov and Strekalov, who had been on Soyuz T-8!) had to use the escape system in the first off-pad abort of the space age, This failure meant that Lyakhov and Aleksandrov would complete their stay aboard Salyut with no visitors.

 

 

 
1995 STS-71 launch

Crew: "Hoot" Gibson (CDR), Charles Precourt (P); Ellen Baker, Greg Harbaugh, Bonnie Dunbar (MS); Anatoli Solovyov, Nikolai Budarin [both Russia] (Mir Exp. 19)

 

69th Shuttle mission; 14th flight of Atlantis

This was the first Shuttle docking with Mir, at last justifying the US spacecraft's name though in a way its designers could never have foreseen. The docking took place on 29 June, 400km above Lake Baikal. The linked spacecraft formed the largest object ever in orbit, with a mass of around 225 tonnes. On this first docking many ceremonial activities were carried out, including joining the halves of a medallion depicting the Orbiter on one half and Mir on the other and 1:200 scale models of the two craft were also connected. The flight would also see the first crew exchange involving the Shuttle, with Solovyov and Budarin remaining on Mir as Expedition 19 while the current crew of Dezhurov, Strekalov and US astronaut Norm Thagard would ride home in Atlantis.

 

 

[GordonD]

28 JUNE

 

1919 Treaty of Versailles signed

 

This was the primary treaty which ended World War One, seven months after the Armistice which put a stop to the actual fighting. Among its provisions, Germany was restricted to an army of no more than 100,000 men, a navy of thirty-six ships but no submarines, and no air force whatsoever. Crucially, however, the treaty did not prevent any rocket research, since nobody had thought of it, which permitted Germany to begin development on what would ultimately lead to the V-2.

 

 

 

1977 Space Shuttle Orbiter/SCA Flight CA-2

Enterprise crew: Joe Engle (CDR); Dick Truly (P)

 

The second Captive-Active flight began at 7:50 local time. Shortly after the combination became airborne, as it climbed towards its cruising height of 5,880m, the Orbiter’s speed brake was opened. At 60% the carrier lost speed and in the fully-open position climb rate was stopped altogether, once more showing the effectiveness of the device. With the brake safely closed again the aircraft continued its climb and further flutter tests were carried out once it had achieved the desired altitude. A combination of pitch-over and speed-brake tests reduced the plane’s height to about 4,600m before it climbed back up to 6,200m to begin a simulated separation run, the first to be carried out with a crew aboard the Orbiter. Tests were conducted with the 747 spoilers at various settings to provide data for the real drops to come. The final major test of the CA-2 flight was a calibration run for the Autoland microwave system: as the combination descended towards Edwards on a 6° glideslope, Engle and Truly aboard the Enterprise monitored their Horizontal Situation Indicators which were tied in to the landing system’s microwave beams. The linked craft touched down safely more than an hour after take-off but as the Orbiter was being deactivated afterwards a major leak was discovered in an APU which had caused problems earlier: the need to repair this would delay the third and final Captive-Active flight test until 28 July.

[GordonD]

29 JUNE

 

1965 PA-2

 

The second off-pad launch escape test for the Apollo programme, conducted as always at White Sands, used the reconditioned Command Module BP-23 that had first been flown in the A-002 Max-Q abort test six months earlier. The capsule reached a peak altitude of 1.58km and came down in the desert 2.32km from the pad.

 

 

1971 Soyuz 11 landing

Crew: Georgi Dobrovolsky (CDR); Vladislav Volkov (FE); Viktor Patsayev (TE)

Landing site: 47.35663°N 70.12142°E (202 km east of Dzhezkazgan)

 

The first space station mission ended in tragedy when the cosmonauts perished during their return. There had been minor concern when Mission Control was unable to re-establish contact after the normal re-entry blackout but this was put down to a communications problem. Thus when the recovery team arrived at the landing site and opened the hatch they were stunned to find the crew lifeless in their seats. This had been a high-profile mission, with TV coverage of what the crew were doing, which made their loss even harder to accept. The initial fear was that the stress of returning to a full Earth gravity environment had been too much for the crew's bodies to withstand: at 23d 18h 22m and 384 orbits this was the longest flight to date. NASA was particularly interested in the outcome of the enquiry as its own orbital workshop, Skylab, was in the planning stages and if there was an inherent limit on how long an astronaut could remain in space there were serious implications for the future of manned flight. However it was discovered that the tragedy had nothing to do with the length of the mission: a pressure valve, intended to admit fresh air to the capsule once it was at a safe height, had jarred open, probably when either the Orbital or Service Modules had been jettisoned. The cabin air had rushed out and the crew, who were not wearing space-suits, died of asphyxia when the pressure dropped. The Soyuz programme was suspended while the spacecraft underwent a major redesign.

 

Note: Official records show the date of the crew's deaths as 30 June and it was indeed that date in the Soviet Union when the tragedy happened. However this thread deals exclusively in Universal Time (same as GMT for all intents and purposes) and the spacecraft landed at around 45 minutes before midnight UCT.

 

 

2012 Shenzhou IX landing

Crew: Jing Haipeng (CDR); Liu Wang, Liu Yang (Op)

Landing site: 42°15'47.98" N, 111°16'43.93" E (Inner Mongolia)

 

Tiangong-1 Expedition 1. Flight time was 12d 15h 25m; 198 orbits.

[GordonD]

30 JUNE

 

1993 Russian Shuttle and Energia programmes cancelled

 

Boris Yeltsin cancelled the Russian Space Shuttle programme as it seemed to have no purpose with the end of the Cold War. The Orbiter had made a single unmanned flight, unmanned, in 1988 but extensive test and training flights had been carried out with the in-atmosphere version which was fitted with jet engines and could fly under its own power. Though the Soviet/Russian Shuttle was generally referred to as Buran, this was in fact the name of the single completed Orbiter: applying this to the programme as a whole was akin to calling the US Shuttle programme Columbia. Strictly speaking, the Russian programme was called VKK, for Vozdushno Kosmicheskiy Korabl (Airborne Spaceship), the equivalent of America's Space Transportation System or STS. The Buran Orbiter was placed in storage at Baikonur Cosmodrome but in 2002 it was destroyed when the hangar roof collapsed, killing eight men. Cancelled at the same time was the Energia launch vehicle, second only to the Saturn V in lifting power. This had flown just twice (the second time with Buran) and attempts to go into partnership with the French came to nothing. It is estimated that the Shuttle/Energia programmes had cost some twenty billion roubles.