Soyuz 33

Soyuz 33 mission is the designation for the flight of a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft to the Soviet space station Salyut 6 It should be the eighth visit of a Soyuz spacecraft, in this space station and was the 53th flight in the Soviet Sojusprogramm.

Crew

Home team

  • Nikolai Nikolayevich Rukavishnikov ( third space flight ), Commander
  • Georgi Ivanov ( first space flight), flight engineer (Bulgaria 1971 Bulgaria)

With this flight Rukavishnikov was after Shatalov (1971 ), Jelissejew (1971 ), Klimuk (1978) and Bykowski (1978 ) the fifth cosmonaut who brought it on three spaceflights. This was the first space flight in which an Energia engineer was given command of a Soyuz spacecraft.

Backup crew

  • Yuri Viktorovich Romanenko, Commander
  • Alexandar Alexandrov Panaiotow, Flight Engineer (Bulgaria 1971 Bulgaria)

Mission overview

The fourth visit to a Intercosmos crew on Salyut 6 with a Bulgarian cosmonaut should be the only visit expedition to the third crew ( Salyut 6 EO -3 ) of the Salyut 6 represent the usual program while the spacecraft Soyuz 32, whose life had expired after 90 days, replace it.

When approaching the sixth and last 6 seconds of ignition of the main engine of Soyuz 33 was launched 4 km away from the station on schedule. However, the following writing process ended unexpectedly after three seconds. The cosmonauts on the station observed a flame towards the reserve engine. In addition, the control system of the coupling Igla reported a fault. Then the flight was canceled.

During the braking maneuver was performed with the reserve system, was carried out according to the planned 188 seconds burning time no automatic shutoff. Only 25 seconds later, the engine was switched off manually by Nikolai Rukavishnikov. As a result, a purely ballistic trajectory with an extremely high physical load of the cosmonauts of about 10 g was reached ( 98 m / s ²). Because the service module was separated after the braking maneuver, a full investigation was not possible.

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