Soyuz 31
Soyuz 31 mission is the designation for the flight of a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft to the Soviet space station Salyut 6 It was the sixth visit of a Soyuz spacecraft in this space station and the 50th flight in Sojusprogramm. Sigmund Jähn flew so under the Intercosmos space program as the first German in space. The spacecraft was 6 EP-4 brought by the fourth visit team Salyut space station and served the second long-term crew Salyut 6 EO-2 to return.
Crew
Start crew
- Valery Fedorovich Bykowski ( third space flight), Commander
- Sigmund Jähn ( first space flight), Research Cosmonaut ( Democratic Republic of Germany DDR 1949 )
Bykowski was so after Shatalov (1971 ), Jelissejew (1971) and Klimuk (1978 ), the fourth cosmonaut who brought it on three spaceflights.
Backup crew
- Viktor Vasilyevich Gorbatko, Commander
- Eberhard Köllner, Research Cosmonaut ( Democratic Republic of Germany DDR 1949 )
Return crew, launched on Soyuz 29
- Vladimir Vasilyevich Kovalyonok ( second space flight), Commander
- Alexander Sergeyevich Ivanchenkov ( first space flight), flight engineer
Mission overview
After Bykowski and Jähn had docked on August 28, 1978 to the Salyut 6 space station, they were greeted by the crew Kovalyonok and Ivanchenkov. In the following seven days numerous scientific experiments were carried out. These included scientific and technical experiments with the multispectral camera MKF 6 for remote sensing, materials science experiments, experiments for crystallization, form breeding and recrystallization and growth of a monocrystal, medical experiments, studying the effects of weightlessness on the faculty of speech, occupational psychological examinations, review of the hearing threshold of the crew, biological experiments on cell growth in microgravity and on the connection of micro-organisms with the organic polymers and inorganic substances.
After the departure of Bykowski and Jähn on September 3, Soyuz 31 was a return spacecraft for Kovalyonok and Ivanchenkov at the aft port of the Salyut. This port was but for the expected transporter Progress 4 is necessary, because only from there could be pumped over the delivered fuel to the Salyut - tanks. So, the two cosmonauts went on September 7 in the space ship, docked off and put a few hundred meters back. The ground station was Salyut 6 rotate half a turn, so that the Soyuz spacecraft could be coupled to the front port. This was the first time in the history of space that a space ship umkoppelte on a space station.
On November 2, 1978 Kovalyonok Ivanchenkov and went back into their spaceship and returned to Earth.
MKF 6
Stamp on the Soyuz 31 to 1 Mark of the GDR