Soyuz 39 was a 1981

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

crewed space flight to the

Salyut 6 Salyut 6 (russian: Салют-6; lit. Salute 6), DOS-5, was a Soviet orbital space station, the eighth station of the Salyut programme. It was launched on 29 September 1977 by a Proton rocket. Salyut 6 was the first space station to receiv ...

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 ...

. It was the fifteenth expedition, and carried the eighth international crew to the orbiting facility. The crew visited

Vladimir Kovalyonok Vladimir Vasiliyevich Kovalyonok ( be, Уладзі́мір Васі́льевіч Кавалёнак; russian: Влади́мир Васи́льевич Ковалёнок; born 3 March 1942 in Beloye, Minsk Oblast, Belorussian SSR) is a retir ...

and

Viktor Savinykh Viktor Petrovich Savinykh (born 7 March 1940) is a Soviet cosmonaut. Selected as a cosmonaut on 1 December 1978, he flew as Flight Engineer on Soyuz T-4, Soyuz T-13 and Soyuz TM-5, and has spent 252 days 17 hours 38 minutes in space. Savinykh reti ...

, who had reached Salyut-6 ten days prior. The flight carried

Vladimir Dzhanibekov Vladimir Aleksandrovich Dzhanibekov (russian: Владимир Александрович Джанибеков, born 13 May 1942) is a former cosmonaut who made five flights. Biography Dzhanibekov was born Vladimir Aleksandrovich Krysin (russian ...

and

Jügderdemidiin Gürragchaa Jügderdemidiin Gürragchaa ( mn, Жүгдэрдэмидийн Гүррагчаа; russian: Жугдэрдэмидийн Гуррагча, , born 5 December 1947) is a Mongolian cosmonaut and military leader. He was the first Mongolian and secon ...

into space. With this mission, Gürragchaa became the first Mongolian, and second Asian cosmonaut. The Mongolian contribution for this mission had begun in 1967, when the president of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences

Bazaryn Shirendev Shirendev Bazaryn (15 May 1912 in present-day Shin-Ider soum, Khovsgol aimag, Mongolia - 8 March 2001 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia) was a Mongol historian, academician and prominent statesman. First president and founding figure of the National Unive ...

attended a conference of scientists from socialist countries in Moscow, where the Intercosmos project was announced. Dzhanibekov and Gürragchaa performed about thirty experiments during the course of the mission.

Crew

Backup crew

Mission parameters

*Mass: 6800 kg *Perigee: 197.5 km *Apogee: 282.8 km *Inclination: 51.6° *Period: 89.01 minutes

Mission highlights

Soyuz 39 docked with the first Mongolian cosmonaut aboard. The resident EO-6 crew assisted the Intercosmos crew with station equipment and oriented the station according to the needs of the visiting crew's experiments. On 24 March, the cosmonauts installed cosmic ray detectors in the station's work and transfer compartments. On 26 March the cosmonauts performed the Illuminator ("viewing port") experiment, which studied the degradation of the station's viewports. On 27 March,

and

of the resident crew used the Gologramma ("hologram") apparatus to image a viewing port damaged by micrometeoroids. They repeated this experiment the next day, when they also collected samples of the station's air and microflora and removed the cosmic ray detectors for return to Earth. 28–29 March were largely devoted to studies of Mongolia from space. The visiting crew also checked out their spacecraft on 29 March The Soviet news service

TASS The Russian News Agency TASS (russian: Информацио́нное аге́нтство Росси́и ТАСС, translit=Informatsionnoye agentstvo Rossii, or Information agency of Russia), abbreviated TASS (russian: ТАСС, label=none) ...

noted that by 29 March, Salyut 6 had conducted 20,140 revolutions of Earth.

References

External links