Kosmos 213
Cosmos 212 and Cosmos 213 were two unmanned Soyuz spaceships that performed an automatic coupling in Earth orbit in April 1968.
Preparation
A coupling of two manned Soyuz spacecraft was scheduled in April 1967 with Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 2, but was canceled after problems with Soyuz 1. The crash of Soyuz 1 of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed. Another experiment was carried out in October 1967 with the unmanned spacecraft Cosmos 186 and 188. Although the coupling did not succeed completely, however, was the first successful automatic connection between two spacecraft. Due to some deficiencies, the head of the Soviet space ordered another unmanned test.
Start
Under the code name Kosmos 212, the first spacecraft was launched on April 14, 1968 at 10:00 UTC from the launch pad at Baikonur 31. Shortly before, was still considered to abort the start because there was evidence that a system had failed.
The next day, the April 15, 1968 at 09:34 UTC followed Cosmos 213 from the launch pad The first bullet into orbit was very precise, so that the distance to the Cosmos 212 was only 4 kilometers and the rendezvous could be initiated immediately.
These were the seventh and eighth launch of a Soyuz spacecraft.
Coupling
When approaching in orbit cosmos took over 212 active Part. Already at 10:21 UTC coupled the two spaceships together on. Since this happened over the South Pacific outside VHF range of Soviet ground stations that air traffic control could not pursue the coupling over the mounted television camera, but had to rely on data that has been transmitted via shortwave. In contrast to the mission of Cosmos 186 and 188, the coupling was complete. Even the loss of 14 of the 28 control jets could be compensated.
The two spaceships were two and a half orbits connected and were separated 14:11 UTC again.
Another History of the flight and landing
In the following days the cosmos led 212 by several course corrections, and various position control systems were used. A failure of all systems was simulated, with a cosmonaut hosted the spaceship with manual control. He received The necessary optical orientation over a television signal from the spacecraft.
Cosmos 212 landed on April 19 at 08:10 UTC near Karaganda. After landing, the parachutes did not dissolve as provided so that strong winds the return capsule subjected to 5 km across the steppe.
Cosmos 213 landed on the following day, April 20, 1968 at 10:11 UTC. Again, blew strong winds with speeds around 90 km / h As with Kosmos 212, the wind caught in the parachutes, so that this landing capsule was far dragged across the floor. Later it turned out that the cause of this static charge in the parachute ropes was that prevented the release of the linen.
Impact on the Soyuz program
Although it has been demonstrated that the different attitude control systems now worked, but still could not be trusted to parachutes. Here are more changes and another unmanned flight were necessary. Under the name of Cosmos 238 of these took place in August 1968. Thereby, the scheduled start of two manned Soyuz spaceships delayed further.
The American Apollo program was still broken in January 1967 after the disaster of Apollo 1. The first manned flight of the new Apollo spacecraft was scheduled for the fall of 1968 under the name of Apollo 7.
More flight data
Cosmos 212
- Mass: 6500 kg
- Perigee: 180 km
- Apogee: 200 km
- Inclination: 51.6 °
- Erdumlaufzeit: 88.3 min
- Type the launcher: Soyuz ( GREY index 11A511 )
- Type the spaceship: Soyuz 7K- OK ( A)
- Serial number: 8
Cosmos 213
- Mass: 6500 kg
- Perigee: 188 km
- Apogee: 254 km
- Inclination: 51.7 °
- Erdumlaufzeit: 88.9 min
- Type the launcher: Soyuz ( GREY Index11A511 )
- Type the spaceship: Soyuz 7K- OK ( P)
- Serial number: 7