Richard Lawrence - The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

On 5 April 1975 the Soviets had to abort a mission after 261 seconds. The second stage failed to drop off due to wiring errors made during manufacture. The vehicle began rolling out of control. The cosmonauts had to separate from their booster. Cosmonaut Vasily Lazarev described the experience of their 20G return to Earth: “It ate all sound, leaving only wheezes and grunts.”

Vasily Lazarev and Oleg Makarov landed on the steppes of Baikonur. They spent the night in a forest until the following morning when they were picked up by a helicopter.

The Soviet moon landing program finally ended. Chief designer Mishin was dismissed on 18 May 1974. His successor cancelled the project and scrapped the remaining boosters.

The rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union was concluded by a joint mission – the product of improving relations between the United States and the Soviet Union which allowed the Soviets to appear to be on equal terms. It was also an experiment into the possibilities ofdeveloping an international space station. Lindsay:

On 5 July 1975 the Soviets made their first televised launch. It wasSoyuz 19. Thiswas theirpartofthe Saturn-Apollo launch.

Although he was 51, Deke Slayton finally got a space flight. Tom Stafford had trained with the Soviet cosmonauts on their systems and in their language. Vance Brand completed the Apollo crew. Aleksei Leonov and Valery Kubasov were the Soyuz crew. As they shot into orbit, Slayton called: “Man, I tell you, this is worth waiting 13 years for, this is a helluva lot of fun – I’ve never felt so free.”

By 8.00 am on 17 July the two spacecraft were approaching one another. When they were 322 km apart Brand told Houston: “OK, we’ve got Soyuz in the sextant.”

Apollo did all the maneouvring because Soyuz didn’t have enough fuel or a window. It took 388 kg to make the rendezvous and Soyuz only carried 136 kg. On their 36th orbit Apollo got to within 30 metres. “I’m approaching Soyuz,” called Stafford in Russian. Leonov rolled Soyuz around 60° to help line up the two spacecraft. “Oh please don’t forget your engine,” he called in English. Everyone appreciated the joke. “Three metres… one metre… capture… we have succeeded,” called Stafford. “Well done Tom, that was a good show. Apollo, Soyuz shaking hands now,” said Leonov. Lindsay:

The Apollo was fitted with a docking adapter module. The astronauts were the first to visit. They had to equalise the pressure before they could open the hatch. They stayed together for 44 hours.

The Apollo missions ended with drama in their final moments. As they re-entered the atmosphere, there was a loud and painful squealontheir intercom. “Theinterferencewas so loud that we had to take our masks off and yell at one another,” Stafford said. He instructed Brand to turn on the automatic landing sequence but Brand couldn’t hear. The drogue parachutes failed to appear on schedule. Brand activated them manually but the automatic attitude control system remained on. So when the capsule began swinging under the parachute the automatic attitude control system began firing the thrusters. Brand shut them down but some gas remained smoking from the thrusters. When the ventilation valve opened the gas was sucked into the cabin. (The ventilation valve equalised the air pressure). The crew began coughing and their eyes burnt and stung. When they hit the water they were still in distress. The capsule turned upside down. Stafford said, “It was touch and go. The oxygen ran out just as we got upright.”

After a few days they had completely recovered. It was the end of an era – the reusable shuttle would take over the task of taking men into orbit.

The plan was to keep Skylab going until the shuttles could reach it and bring it back into service, but once its batteries ran out it lacked the power to keep it in orbit and its orbit began to decay. An increase in sunspot activity warmed up the earth’s atmospher, which expanded until it reached Skylab. On 12 July 1979 the big solar panels were torn off as Skylab spun and twisted, its final throes following shortly after.

Hamish Lindsay, a member of the NASA tracking team in Australia, described Skylab’s final throes:

They began 111 kilometres over Ascension Island in the Atlantic when the radar station there spotted the big solar panels begin to tear off as the lifeless hulk spun and twisted out of control. “It’s now out of range of all our tracking stations,” said NASA. “The crash line is from Esperance in Western Australia to Cape York in Queensland. The chances of anybody coming to harm are minimal, but people are advised to stay indoors.”

During Skylab’s last week in space, the Australian Federal Government set up a special Skylab Communications Centre in the Deakin Telephone Exchange in Canberra. Manned by about 12 officials from five departments, it monitored every move Skylab made over a hotline from Washington. Police and emergency services around Australia were put on alert. People all around the Earth under its flight path nervously wondered.

In the United States all aircraft in the north-eastern and north-western areas were grounded as Skylab passed overhead for the last time. Four hundred members of the world’s media had gathered at NASA Headquarters in Washington where a statement was issued that Skylab had come down safely in the Indian Ocean, calculated from the last radar tracks.

Some celebrations had already begun in America for the safe ending of Skylab.

Then, quite unexpectedly, there were disjointed reports from around the desert 800 kilometres behind Perth. “There have been reports of sightings of fragments over Australia – from Kalgoorlie, Esperance, Albany and Perth,” NASA officials announced. In the middle of winding up the story on the end of Skylab the journalists at NASA headquarters in Washington were electrified into action: “Where’s Albany?” “How do you spell Kalgoorlie?” “Where’s this Perth?” and suddenly the sleepy little outback towns of Kalgoorlie, Albany, Rawlinna, and Balladonia were thrust into the world’s major newspaper and media headlines.

Captain Bill Anderson was flying his Fokker Friendship 200 kilometres east of Perth on his final approach to Perth airport when his First Officer Jim Graham saw a blue light through his left window. Anderson recalls, “We first saw it at 12:35 local (Perth) time – we would have watched it for about 45 seconds. I had the impression it was a bubble shape. As it descended it changed from a bright blue to an almost orange-red and you could see the breakup start to occur. It finished up as a very bright orange ball in the front, and the remainder behind giving off sparks. It was a very long tail, perhaps several hundred miles long.”

Bradley Smith, an employee at Perth’s Bickley Observatory, described his sighting. “We first saw it as a light behind the clouds. It was travelling from south to east about 90 above the horizon. If you can imagine a train on fire with bits of burning fire all the way down the carriages that’s what it was like.”

John Seiler, managing the remote sheep and cattle station of Noondoonia 850 kilometres east of Perth saw the final moments of Skylab with his wife Elizabeth. “I was watching for it – and saw it coming straight for us. It was an incredible sight – hundreds of shining lights dropping all around the homestead. They were white as they headed for us, but as they began dropping the pieces turned a dull red.

“The horses on the property ran mad. They galloped all over the place, and the dogs were barking. We couldn’t calm them down. Then we could hear the noise of wind in the air as bigger pieces passed over us – all the time there was a tremendous sonic boom – it must have lasted about a minute. Just after the last pieces dropped out of sight, the whole house shook three times. It must have been the biggest pieces crashing down. Afterwards there was a burning smell like burnt earth.”