Kosmos 557 (russian: Космос 557 meaning ''Cosmos 557'') was the designation given to DOS-3, the third

space station A space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting a human crew in orbit for an extended period of time, and is therefore a type of space habitat. It lacks major propulsion or landing systems. An orbital station or an orbital space station i ...

in the

Salyut program The ''Salyut'' programme (russian: Салют, , meaning "salute" or "fireworks") was the first space station programme, undertaken by the Soviet Union. It involved a series of four crewed scientific research space stations and two crewed m ...

. It was originally intended to be launched as Salyut-3, but due to its failure to achieve orbit on May 11, 1973, three days before the launch of

Skylab Skylab was the first United States space station, launched by NASA, occupied for about 24 weeks between May 1973 and February 1974. It was operated by three separate three-astronaut crews: Skylab 2, Skylab 3, and Skylab 4. Major operations in ...

, it was renamed Kosmos-557. Due to errors in the

flight control system A conventional fixed-wing aircraft flight control system consists of flight control surfaces, the respective cockpit controls, connecting linkages, and the necessary operating mechanisms to control an aircraft's direction in flight. Aircraft ...

while out of the range of ground control, the station fired its attitude thruster until it consumed all of its attitude control fuel and became uncontrollable before raising its orbit to the desired altitude. Since the spacecraft was already in orbit and had been registered by Western

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...

, the Soviets disguised the launch as "Kosmos 557" and quietly allowed it to reenter

Earth's atmosphere The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for ...

and burn up a week later. It was revealed to have been a Salyut station only much later.

References

External links

NSSDC.GSFC.NASA

Soviet Space Stations as Analogs
– NASA report 1973 in spaceflight 1973 in the Soviet Union Kosmos satellites Salyut program Space stations Spacecraft launched in 1973 Spacecraft which reentered in 1973 {{USSR-spacecraft-stub

See also

References

External links