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Soyuz 7 (, ''Union 7'') was part of an October, 1969, joint mission with Soyuz 6 and Soyuz 8 that saw three
Soyuz spacecraft Soyuz () is a series of spacecraft which has been in service since the 1960s, having made more than 140 flights. It was designed for the Soviet space program by the Korolev Design Bureau (now Energia). The Soyuz succeeded the Voskhod spacecraf ...
in orbit together at the same time, carrying a total of seven
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. The crew consisted of commander
Anatoly Filipchenko Major General Anatoly Vasilyevich Filipchenko (26 February 1928 – 7 August 2022) was a Soviet cosmonaut of Ukrainian descent. He flew on the Soyuz 7 and Soyuz 16 missions. He was born in Davydovka, Voronezh Governorate, RSFSR. After lea ...
, flight engineer Vladislav Volkov and research-cosmonaut
Viktor Gorbatko Viktor Vasilyevich Gorbatko (; 3 December 1934 – 17 May 2017) was a Soviet cosmonaut who flew on the Soyuz 7, Soyuz 24, and Soyuz 37 missions. Early life Viktor Vasilievich Gorbatko was born on 3 December 1934 to Vasili Pavlovich and Matre ...
, whose mission was to dock with Soyuz 8 and transfer crew, as the Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 missions did. Soyuz 6 was to film the operation from nearby. However, this objective was not achieved due to equipment failures. Soviet sources later claimed that no docking had been intended, but this seems unlikely, given the docking adapters carried by the spacecraft, and the fact that the Soyuz 8 crew were both veterans of the previous successful docking mission. This was the last time that the Soviet crewed Moon landing hardware was tested in orbit, and the failure seems to have been one of the final nails in the coffin of the programme. The radio call sign of the spacecraft was , meaning ''blizzard'', which years later was re-used as the name of the entirely different spaceplane Buran. This word is apparently used as the name of an active or aggressive squadron in Soviet military training, and just like Soyuz 4, the Soyuz 7 spacecraft was constructed to be the active or male spacecraft in its docking.


Crew


Backup Crew


Reserve Crew


Mission parameters

* Mass: * Perigee: * Apogee: * Inclination: 51.65° * Period: 88.77 minutes


Mission

The mission objectives included: * checkout the modified structure of the Soyuz craft, * further improvement of the control, orientation, and orbital stabilisation systems and navigation aids, * debugging the piloting systems by orbital maneuvering of the spaceships in relation to one another, * testing of a system for control of the simultaneous flight of three spacecraft, * scientific observations and photographing of geological-geographical subjects and exploration of the
Earth's atmosphere The atmosphere of Earth is composed of a layer of gas mixture that surrounds the Earth's planetary surface (both lands and oceans), known collectively as air, with variable quantities of suspended aerosols and particulates (which create weathe ...
, * studying circumterrestrial space, * conducting experiments of
engineering research Engineering research - as a branch of science, it stands primarily for research that is oriented towards achieving a specific goal that would be useful, while seeking to employ the powerful tools already developed in Engineering as well as in non ...
and
biomedical engineering Biomedical engineering (BME) or medical engineering is the application of engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology for healthcare applications (e.g., diagnostic or therapeutic purposes). BME also integrates the logica ...
importance.


Return

The ship was involved in group flight with Soyuz 6 and Soyuz 8. Docking did not occur, and the ship landed 5 days after launch, at 155 km at the northwest 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 ...
.


References

{{Orbital launches in 1969 Crewed Soyuz missions Spacecraft launched in 1969 1969 in the Soviet Union Spacecraft which reentered in 1969