Vozhod 2

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Mission dates
Mission: Vozhod 2
COSPAR-ID : 1965-022A
Spacecraft: Vozhod 3KD
Dimensions: 5682 kg
Call sign: Алмаз (Almas - " diamond ")
Crew: 2
Begin: March 18, 1965, 07:00 UT
Starting place: Baikonur 1/5
Landing: March 19, 1965, 09:02 UT
Landing place: Ural foothills
59 ° 34 ′  N , 55 ° 28 ′  E
Flight duration: 1d 2h 02min
Earth orbits: 18th
Rotation time : 90.93 min
Orbit inclination : 64.79 °
Apogee : 475 km
Perigee : 167 km
Covered track: 717,300 km
◄ Before / After ►
Kosmos 57
(unmanned) 		Kosmos 110
(unmanned)
Manned missions:
Vozhod 1 Soyuz 1

Vozhod 2 [ vasˈxɔt ] (alternative spelling Woßchod , Russian Восход "sunrise") was a Soviet manned space flight as part of the very short Vozhod program. For the first time an astronaut left the protective shell of his spaceship and floated freely in space ( spacewalk ).

crew

preparation

After the successful flight of Woschod 1 , in which three space travelers were launched in a spacecraft for the first time, another spectacular first achievement should now be accomplished: a cosmonaut should leave the spacecraft in earth orbit and float freely next to it.

The Voschod 3KD spaceship, which was modified compared to Voschod 1, only offered space for two cosmonauts. Where a third cosmonaut was sitting at Woschod 1, an inflatable airlock was now installed, which, when packed, had a diameter of 70 cm and a length of 77 cm. In space, the lock could unfold outwards and was then 2.5 m long, with an outer diameter of 1.2 m and an inner diameter of 1.0 m. The lock weighed about 250 kg.

An unmanned spaceship of this type was launched on February 22, 1965 under the code name Kosmos 57 . In the earth's orbit, the external airlock unfolded as planned, which the ground station could even see on TV. Two ground stations mistakenly sent radio commands at the same time. The receiver in the spaceship incorrectly interpreted this as a command to ignite the brake rocket in order to initiate the landing. However, since the spaceship was not correctly aligned, it apparently remained in orbit, but was set into a rapid rotation. The self-destruct mechanism triggered, and Kosmos 57 exploded just under three hours after launch.

Still, the manned launch was scheduled for less than a month later.

crew

Block edition of the Soviet Post (1965); left: Belyayev, right: Leonow

Of the original 20 members of the first cosmonaut group , five had completed a space flight after completing the Vostok program . One had died, two others were no longer fit for space due to accidents or other reasons. Four pilots were excluded from training for disciplinary reasons.

That left eight cosmonauts waiting for their first space mission: Vladimir Komarov , Alexei Leonow , Boris Wolynow , Pavel Belyayev , Evgeny Chrunov , Viktor Gorbatko , Dmitri Saikin and Georgi Schonin , with the first three already assigned as substitutes for a Vostok flight were.

In July 1964, Nikolai Kamanin , the head of cosmonaut training, made the decision to select the team: Belyayev and Gorbatko were to be trained as commanders, Leonov and Khrunov for exiting. Saikin later joined the team and was also trained to exit.

On February 9, 1965 it was officially decided that Vozhod 2 would be manned by Belyayev and Leonov, with Chrunow and Saikin as a substitute team, with Chrunov replacing both Belyayev and Leonov. Gorbatko also counted as a substitute.

Flight history

begin

Vozhod 2 took off on March 18, 1965 at 07:00 UT from the rocket launch site in Baikonur .

First space exit

Airlock and spacesuit as used on Woschod 2

The inflatable airlock was already deployed during the first orbit. Leonov forced himself into the small lock, which was then decompressed. The cabin with Belyayev remained under pressure, which deprived him of the opportunity to give his comrade effective help in an emergency. At about 08:30 UT, Leonow went into space.

Shortly afterwards, Vozhod 2 was back in the VHF reception range of the Soviet ground stations, so that a television camera on the outside of Vozhod could send images of this historic moment to earth.

Leonov was secured with a safety line next to the spaceship for around 12 minutes. When he wanted to go back into the lock, it turned out to be more difficult than expected, because his spacesuit had inflated due to the lack of counter pressure and had become immobile. Only with a pressure reduction and head first could he go back into the airlock with extreme effort. The pressure equalization to the internal pressure of the cabin was then carried out in the external lock.

Problems with the onward flight

After Leonow was back on board, the inner hatch to the lock was closed and the lock was blown off. During the onward flight it was found that the pressure in the oxygen tanks of Voschod 2 fell faster than planned. This indicated a leak in the capsule at the inner hatch, since the cabin pressure was kept largely constant by the life support system, but the oxygen partial pressure continued to rise. When the pressure in the oxygen tanks had dropped from originally 75 to 25 bar, the flight control decided to return it early.

Landing and recovery

During the 16th orbit, the automatic landing system should have been programmed by the ground station using radio commands, but this failed. As a result, the landing after the 17th orbit could not be carried out as planned. Landing within the designated area would not have been possible from orbits 19 to 21. Therefore, due to the problems with the cabin atmosphere, the flight control felt that another attempt at an automated landing was too high a risk and Belyayev was allowed to carry out the first manually controlled landing of a Soviet spaceship. Belyayev was instructed to align the ship manually and to ignite it by hand, which was achieved in the 18th orbit. However, manual ignition was 48 s too late. After the burnout, the capsule did not separate completely from the device part. As a result, the spaceship staggered violently at the beginning of re-entry. Eventually, however, the remaining connections burned through. Due to the resulting inaccuracies, the targeted landing site was overflown by 368 kilometers and Vozhod 2 fell in the foreland of the Ural Mountains .

The spaceship landed at 59 ° 34′N 55 ° 28′E in a snow-covered coniferous forest. Beljajew and Leonow were able to use Morse code to inform the ground station via short wave that “everything was normal”. About four hours after landing, they were sighted by a search helicopter, about 30 kilometers southwest of Berezniki . The helicopter could not land due to the terrain, but at least it could drop warm clothing and food for the cosmonauts.

It was only after dark that another helicopter was able to land about 5 kilometers from the landing capsule, but the rescue teams were unable to get through to Vozhod 2. At that time the successful landing had already been announced on the radio.

The next morning rescue teams jumped off with the parachute, but it took until noon to reach Belyayev and Leonov. It turned out to be too risky to hoist the cosmonauts up to a helicopter with a winch, and so had to spend another night in the taiga, but now in the company of the 20 or so people on the rescue team.

Two landing sites had meanwhile been cleared. The next morning, more than 36 hours after landing, Belyayev and Leonov skied to the nearest clearing and were lifted on board a helicopter, which took them to the next landing site, where they transferred to a larger helicopter. The phone call from party leader Leonid Brezhnev reached them at the airport in Perm , the next major city . Towards evening the cosmonauts arrived in Baikonur. The recovery took two days, twice as long as the space flight.

meaning

Postage stamp of the GDR from 1965

Like Woschod 1, Woschod 2 caused a worldwide sensation. The Soviet manned space flight had again achieved a first achievement. The sometimes very serious problems (re-boarding, leakage of the capsule, landing) were kept secret from the public. In all three cases a catastrophe was narrowly avoided.

The Americans started the first manned flight of the Gemini program with Gemini 3 just a week later . Barely three months later, Edward White also undertook a space exit with Gemini 4 , and another two months later the US took the long-term record for space flights for the first time with Gemini 5 .

In the case of the Soviets, however, a planned continuous flight with Vozhod 3 was repeatedly postponed, and the development of the new Soyuz spaceship was visibly delayed. Soyuz 1 only started two years after Vozhod 2 . However, the planned coupling in space with the transfer of cosmonauts from one spaceship to another was canceled, and technical problems led to the crash of Soyuz 1 and the death of Vladimir Komarov , which further set back manned Soviet space travel. Only in January 1969 was a Soviet space exit again carried out at Soyuz 5 .

presentation

Alexei Leonow described the exit in his 1971 memory bookwalker in space in West Germany and the book Ausstieg im Kosmos printed in Moscow in 1980 .

filming

The space flight was the template for the 2017 Russian movie Die Zeit der Erste by Dmitri Kisseljow , which was also published under the title Spacewalker .

literature

  • Colin Burgess: The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team: Their Lives, Legacy, and Historical Impact , Springer Praxis Books / Space Exploration 2008, ISBN 978-0387848235

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexei Leonow: Walkers in Space. Memories . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1971, ISBN 3-421-01559-7 .
    Alexei Leonow: Exit in the cosmos . Malysch Publishing House, Moscow 1980.