Joint space mission

Press, 17 September 1976, Page 5

Joint space mission

NZPA Moscow The two cosmonauts engaged in the Soviet Union’s first joint space experiment with East Germany are orbiting the Earth on a mission to prepare for future longer-distance flights.

Russian space officials say that the mission will be relatively brief, and that the cosmonauts will make no attempt to dock with the Salyut 5 space laboratory, which was left only 23 days ago by another pair of Soviet spacemen. The commander of the latest mission, Colonel Valery Bykovsky, who is 42, and his civilian flight engineer, Mr Vladimir Aksenov, a year younger, were blasted off from the Baikonur launching site in Central Asia in the Soyuz 22 spaceship originally built as a back-up vehicle for the joint American-Russian ApolloSoyuz flight last year.

The Government newspaper, “Izvestia,” reports that its docking equipment has been removed.

Colonel Bykovsky, the veteran of a 1963 space flight, said in a pre-launch interview that he and Mr Aksenov would be given greater freedom on this mission in handling their spacecraft and doing experiments in preparation for future lo-nger-distance flights. He did not elaborate, and there has since been no indication what specific goal the Soviet Union’s manned space programme — until now

■ confined to Earth orbits is planning. Previous Soviet spacecraft have given cosmonauts far i less control than their American counterparts have enjoyed. Aboard the Soyuz 22 is multi-zonal photographic equipment made in East I Germany to enable the cosmonauts to photograph East ; Germany and Soviet Union ; territory from space for the • first time.