Moscow launches new type of spacecraft

Press, 21 February 1986, Page 6

Moscow launches new type of spacecraft

NZPA-AFP Moscow The Soviet Union has launched a new-genera-tion type of scientific spacecraft called Mir (Peace), which the official Tass news agency called a step towards “permanently manned orbital stations.”

Mir, which carried no cosmonauts and was to be tested on automatic controls, had a new docking system, permitting up to six other spacecraft to link up with it Mir was “a third generation of Soviet space laboratories,” Tass said. In the long run, along with the Salyut 7 station, which was launched in

April, 1982, and is still in orbit, Mir could build up “a multiple-use pilot complex.”

Tass quoted Colonel Alexei Leonov, deputy commander of cosmonaut training, as saying that the successful launching meant the Soviet Union had passed “from research and experiment to a wide range of productive activities in space.”

Asked when cosmonauts would first be sent aboard Mir, Colonel Leonov would only say, “Not before the end of thorough testing of the new station in space.”

Tass said Mir could link up with pilot vessels,

cargo craft dr "modules” —which Colonel Leonov defined as “a sort of large unpiloted vessel having energy and survival systems and capable of carrying out autonomous exercises in space, each module having a specific scientific mission.”

Mir’s power capability was considerably greater than that of Salyut 7, Tass said. A hook-up of several modules would improve working and living conditions for cosmonauts. For the first time, the agency said, there would be individual cabins for the space crew, each one having a small table, an armchair and a sleepingbag.