Soyuz 35

Crew launch, station activation

Soyuz 35 lifted off on April 9, 1980, carrying cosmonauts Leonid Popov and Valery Ryumin toward the Salyut 6 space station. This mission came after a busy period for the uncrewed station. An uncrewed test vehicle, Soyuz T-1, had been docked there for months before it undocked on March 23 and was sent to burn up in the atmosphere two days later. Right after that, on March 27, the uncrewed supply ship Progress 8 launched and attached itself to the station’s rear docking port. By April 2, the crew on the ground had used Progress 8 to perform several maneuvers that adjusted the station’s orbit.

Popov’s original flight engineer was supposed to be Valentin Lebedev, but he hurt his knee in a trampoline accident and was ruled out. Since none of the backup crew had flown in space before—a requirement that had been put in place after the Soyuz 25 failure—Ryumin was asked to either take Lebedev’s place or postpone the whole mission. This was despite Ryumin having just finished a six-month stay on the station the previous August. His family was not happy about the decision.

The Soyuz 35 crew docked at the station’s empty front port on April 10 and climbed aboard. Ryumin read the traditional note left by the previous crew—a note he himself had written, never expecting to be the one reading it. Salyut 6 was now in its fourth year in orbit, and it was showing its age. Ryumin noticed that the two windows in the transfer compartment had gone cloudy and were covered in chips from micrometeoroids and space junk. The cosmonauts swapped out parts of the attitude control and life support systems, put in a new warning system, synced the station’s clocks with Mission Control in TsUP, added an 80-kilogram storage battery, and used Progress 8 to top off the oxygen and nitrogen tanks.

Progress 8 finished its job on April 15. The crew filled it with trash, then undocked it and sent it to burn up three days later. Progress 9 launched next, docking on April 29. The following day saw the first-ever transfer of water from a tanker to a Salyut station. All cargo and refueling work was done by May 12, wrapping up the station’s resupply for the long-duration crew.

Soyuz 36 and Soyuz T-2 crews visit

Progress 9 left the station on 20 May, freeing up the rear docking port for the next crew. On 26 May, Soyuz 36 lifted off carrying Valery Kubasov and Hungarian cosmonaut Bertalan Farkas. This mission had originally been set for 5 June 1979 but was scrapped after the Soyuz 33 failure. It was part of the Soviet Intercosmos program, which brought guest cosmonauts from allied countries to the space station for roughly week-long stays.

Once aboard, the visiting team conducted Hungarian experiments, such as measuring the radiation doses the crew received and examining how interferon forms in human cells in weightlessness. Kubasov and Farkas came back to Earth in Soyuz 35, leaving the resident crew with the newer Soyuz 36. The residents then moved that spacecraft to the station’s front port, a process that took about 90 minutes. This quick swap of ferries, combined with Soyuz 36 launching almost as early as possible to keep a normal recovery window, led observers to think the secretive Soviets might be planning another Intercosmos mission to make up for lost time after the Soyuz 33 failure.

A launch did happen soon, but not the one expected. On 5 June, Soyuz T-2 launched with Yury Malyshev and Vladimir Aksyonov, marking the first crewed flight of the new Soyuz T design. It docked at Salyut 6’s rear port the next day. Since the mission was just a test of the new spacecraft, it lasted only two days before the crew departed and returned to Earth.

The resident crew meanwhile fixed the station’s Kaskad attitude control system and ran materials processing experiments. On 1 July, Popov and Ryumin received Progress 10 at the station. The supply ship brought replacement gear, regular crew supplies, a Polaroid camera, a color television monitor, and tapes of Soviet pop music. After refueling the station, the tanker undocked on 17 July and burned up in the atmosphere on 19 July.

That same day, Popov and Ryumin sent a live greeting from the station to the 1980 Summer Olympics, wishing the athletes good starts. Their message appeared on the scoreboard at Central Lenin Stadium during the opening ceremony, and their voices were broadcast over loudspeakers.

First Asian and Cuban cosmonauts, end of mission

Everyone expected the next Intercosmos mission to be Cuban, but that prediction fell apart when Vietnam’s Pham Tuan became the first Asian cosmonaut. He launched on Soyuz 37 with Viktor Gorbatko on July 23, a date chosen to coincide with the Moscow Olympics and the global attention on the Soviet Union. The visiting crew swapped spacecraft, leaving Earth on the docked Soyuz 36 and returning on July 31. Pham Tuan was a celebrated flying ace from the Vietnam War who had shot down American planes, a detail the Soviet media highlighted. Many saw the flight as a quiet jab at the United States for boycotting the Olympics.

The next day, resident crew members Popov and Ryumin moved Soyuz 37 to the front docking port, hinting that another launch might be imminent. It wasn’t. No Progress supply ship arrived either. Instead, the crew ran a joint experiment with ground scientists using their Yelena-F gamma ray telescope. The plan was to compare readings with a ground-based telescope, but the weather balloon carrying the equipment malfunctioned, and thieves stole most of the gear before recovery teams could reach it.

The next landing window fell between October 2 and 15, which pointed to a Cuban launch on September 24. But observers were wrong again. Soyuz 38 launched on September 18, nearly a week early. Cuban Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, the first person of African descent in space, flew with Yuri Romanenko. They were the fourth visiting crew to meet the resident team. The early launch was timed so Cubans could watch their countryman pass overhead. The visiting crew carried out 27 experiments in materials processing and medicine. Since the Soyuz 35 crew was about to return home, the Soyuz 38 crew did not swap spacecraft when they came back on September 26.