Soyuz 28

Soyuz 28 (Russian: Союз 28, Union 28) was a 1978 Soviet crewed mission to the orbiting Salyut 6 space station.[2] It was the fourth mission to the station, the third successful docking, and the second visit to the resident crew launched in Soyuz 26.

Soyuz 28
COSPAR ID1978-023A
SATCAT no.10694
Mission duration7 days, 22 hours, 16 minutes
Spacecraft properties
Spacecraft typeSoyuz 7K-T
ManufacturerNPO Energia
Launch mass6,800 kilograms (15,000 lb)
Crew
Crew size2
MembersAleksei Gubarev
Vladimír Remek
CallsignЗенит (Zenit – "Zenith")
Start of mission
Launch date2 March 1978, 15:28 (1978-03-02UTC15:28Z) UTC
RocketSoyuz-U
Launch siteBaikonur 1/5[1]
End of mission
Landing date10 March 1978, 13:44 (1978-03-10UTC13:45Z) UTC
Landing site51°N 67°E
Orbital parameters
Reference systemGeocentric
RegimeLow Earth
Perigee altitude198.9 kilometres (123.6 mi)
Apogee altitude275.6 kilometres (171.2 mi)
Inclination51.65 degrees
Period88.95 minutes
Docking with Salyut 6
Soyuz programme
(Crewed missions)
 

Cosmonaut Vladimír Remek from Czechoslovakia became the first person launched into space who was not a citizen of the United States or the Soviet Union. The other crew member was Aleksei Gubarev. The flight was the first mission in the Intercosmos program that gave Eastern Bloc and other communist states access to space through crewed and uncrewed launches.

Crew
Position Cosmonaut
Commander Aleksei Gubarev
EP-2
Second and last spaceflight
Research Cosmonaut Vladimír Remek, IK
EP-2
Only spaceflight

Backup crew
Position Cosmonaut
Commander Nikolai Rukavishnikov
Research Cosmonaut Oldřich Pelčák, IK

Mission parameters
  • Mass: 6,800 kg (15,000 lb)
  • Perigee: 198.9 km (123.6 mi)
  • Apogee: 275.6 km (171.2 mi)
  • Inclination: 51.65°
  • Period: 88.95 minutes

Mission highlights
The Soyuz 28 capsule, on display at the Prague Aviation Museum, Kbely

The Soyuz 28 mission was the first Intercosmos flight, whereby military pilots from Soviet bloc nations were flown on flights of about eight days to a Soviet space station. Pilots from other nations would eventually also fly. The program was a reaction to American plans to fly Western Europeans on Space Shuttle missions.[3]

Vladimir Remek, the first non-Soviet, non-American to travel to space, was launched aboard Soyuz 28 on 2 March 1978, after a three-day delay of unspecified cause. The Soyuz commander was Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Gubarev. The crew docked with the orbiting Salyut 6 space station, and greeted the occupants Georgi Grechko and Yuri Romanenko who had arrived on Soyuz 26 in December. Gubarev and Grechko had previously flown together on Soyuz 17 to the Salyut 4 space station in 1975.[4]

The day after the docking, the Soyuz 26 crew celebrated their breaking of the space endurance record of 84 days, set by the Skylab 4 crew in 1974.[4]

While the mission had a political purpose, scientific experiments were carried out, including one which monitored the growth of chlorella algae in zero gravity, another which used the on-board Splav furnace to melt glass, lead, silver, and copper chlorides, and an experiment called Oxymeter which measured oxygen in human tissue.[3]

On 10 March, the Soyuz 28 crew prepared for their return to Earth, packing experiments and testing systems. They undocked from the station and landed 310 kilometres (190 mi) west of Tselinograd later that day.[3]

A joke appeared soon after the mission that Remek's hand had mysteriously turned red. He informed the doctors, the joke goes, that this was because every time he went to touch something, the Soviet crewmembers would slap his hand and yell, "Don't touch that!"[5]

References
  1. "Baikonur LC1". Encyclopedia Astronautica. Archived from the original on 2009-04-15. Retrieved 2009-03-04.
  2. The mission report is available here: http://www.spacefacts.de/mission/english/soyuz-28.htm
  3. Newkirk, Dennis (1990). Almanac of Soviet Manned Space Flight. Houston, Texas: Gulf Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-87201-848-8.
  4. Clark, Phillip (1988). The Soviet Manned Space Program. New York: Orion Books, a division of Crown Publishers, Inc. ISBN 978-0-517-56954-2.
  5. National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Douglas A. Vakoch (6 July 2011). Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective. Government Printing Office. pp. 179–. ISBN 978-0-16-088358-3. Retrieved 5 August 2012.
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