Mystery about space flight

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33626, 30 August 1974, Page 9

Mystery about space flight

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

MOSCOW , August 29.

The two Russian cosmonauts and their Soyuz 15 spacecraft returned safely to Earth last night after a mysterious two-day flight, and Western scientists are asking: W as it a successful mini-mission, or a hastily-aborted flop.

I The Soviet Union news! ’ ! agency, Tass, reported that Lieutenant-Colonel Gennady ijSarafanov and Flight- . i Engineer Lev Demin, cofts landed in their descent t module at a planned spot 30 miles south-west of the city i of Tselinograd, in Soviet Kazakhstan. 5 Their landing — after , which doctors pronounced 1 them to be in good health—j followed an unparalleled misi sion in which they apparently 1 nlaved tag with the orbiting 2 Salyut 3 space station, several times approaching and - inspecting it, but never dockr ing with it, as ha' l been -’widely expected. »I Western observers in Mos- > cow believe that the Cos- - monauts intended to dock, as did their two predecessors in

Soyuz 14 last month, but that they were prevented from doing so, possibly by a failure in the docking mechanism, or because of some other fault. Tass made no mention of any hitch, and stated that the object of the flight was simply “to develop processes of manoeuvring and rendezvous with the space station in various flight conditions.”

An unusual feature of the Soyuz 5 flight was that the two cosmonauts landed in pitch darkness, rendering the recovery' process on the Central Asia steppes particularly difficult.

This fact strengthens the view of Westerners who! think that an emergency! operation was put into action! to bring back the spacemen as quickly as possible because the Soyuz ferry vehicle was not equipped to support life tor very long. Tass, however, said that the night recovery was a deliberate experiment, and added that the ground location crew had speedily detected the descent module, in spite of adverse weather conditions.

The descent itself followed the traditional Soviet pattern —splitting off the descent module into a landing trajectory, and braking in the earth’s atmosphere followed by a soft landing by parachute. Tass said that the data obtained during the Soyuz 15 flight was being processed and studied, and that Salyut 3 was continuing in automatic flight according to its pre-set programme, about 165 miles above the Earth. The space station was launched on June 25.