Soyuz 10 (, ''Union 10'') was launched on 22 April 1971 as the world's first mission to the world's first

space station A space station (or orbital station) is a spacecraft which remains orbital spaceflight, in orbit and human spaceflight, hosts humans for extended periods of time. It therefore is an artificial satellite featuring space habitat (facility), habitat ...

, the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

Salyut 1 Salyut 1 (), also known as DOS-1 (Durable Orbital Station 1), was the world's first space station. It was launched into low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on April 19, 1971. The Salyut programme, ''Salyut'' program subsequently achieved five m ...

. The docking was not successful and the crew, Vladimir Shatalov, Aleksei Yeliseyev, and Nikolai Rukavishnikov, returned to

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

without having entered the station. Following difficulties in docking pairs of Soyuz capsules, this would be the first of numerous docking failures in the Soviet space station program.Mission report
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Spacecraft

The spacecraft was the first of the upgraded Soyuz 7K-OKS, featuring the new "probe and drogue" docking mechanism with internal crew transfer capability, intended for space station visits.

Mission

The

cosmonaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

s Vladimir Shatalov, Aleksei Yeliseyev, and Nikolai Rukavishnikov were able to navigate their Soyuz 10 spacecraft to the Salyut 1 station, yet during docking they ran into problems. The automatic control system failed during approach, owing to a serious design oversight. Soft dock (contact between the spacecraft and station without a full link) was achieved on 24 April 1971 at 01:47 GMT, but the computer sensed an abnormality in the spacecraft's alignment and began firing the attitude control jets to compensate. With Soyuz 10 being pushed to one side by the attitude control system, it became impossible to achieve hard dock, and large quantities of propellant were expended doing so. The docking attempt was called off, but further difficulty occurred when the probe would not come out of the space station's docking cone. The obvious solution was simply to jettison the orbital module and leave it attached to Salyut 1, but this would make it impossible for future Soyuz missions to dock; thus, the space station would have to be abandoned. Eventually, ground controllers realised that the cosmonauts could throw a

circuit breaker A circuit breaker is an electrical safety device designed to protect an Electrical network, electrical circuit from damage caused by current in excess of that which the equipment can safely carry (overcurrent). Its basic function is to interr ...

in the docking mechanism, for interrupting the power supply, which would cause the probe to automatically retract. This procedure worked, and undocking was completed and the capsule returned to Earth later on 24 April 1971 at 23:40 GMT. The automatic control system would be redesigned on future Soyuz spacecraft.

Crew

Backup crew

Reserve crew

Mission parameters

* Mass: * Perigee: * Apogee: * Inclination: 51.6° * Period: 89.0 minutes

Return

Retrorockets were fired at the first opportunity after undocking to permit return to

. One last hitch presented itself when toxic fumes began to fill the capsule during reentry, causing Rukavishnikov to pass out; however, all three crew members were recovered unscathed. The landing at 120 km to the northeast of Karaganda,

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

, the first night-time landing of a crewed spacecraft, was a success.

References

{{Orbital launches in 1971 Crewed Soyuz missions 1971 in spaceflight 1971 in the Soviet Union Spacecraft launched in 1971 Spacecraft which reentered in 1971