COSPAR ID 1983-062A Spacecraft type Soyuz-T Period 1.5 hours Launch date 27 June 1983 | Orbits completed 2,361 Manufacturer NPO Energia Dates 27 Jun 1983 – 23 Nov 1983 Landing date 23 November 1983 | |
Mission duration 149 days, 10 hours, 45 minutes, Launch mass 6,850 kilograms (15,100 lb) Members Vladimir Lyakhov, Aleksandr Pavlovich Aleksandrov | ||
Soyuz T-9 (Russian: Союз Т-9, Union T-9) was the 4th expedition to Salyut 7 following the failed docking of Soyuz T-8. Returned lab experiments to earth. The next mission, Soyuz T-10a, had failed to launch due to a fire.
Contents
Mission parameters
Mission highlights
4th expedition to Salyut 7. Its mission was heavily impacted by the Soyuz T-8 docking failure and the Soyuz T-10a Soyuz booster failures which bracketed it.
Almost immediately after docking at Salyut 7’s aft port, the crew entered Cosmos 1443 and commenced transferring the 3.5 tons of cargo lining its walls to Salyut 7.
Window impact: On July 27 a small object struck a Salyut 7 viewport. It blasted out a 4-mm crater, but did not penetrate the outer of the window’s two panes. The Soviets believed it was a member of the Delta Aquariid meteor shower, though it may have been a small piece of orbital debris.
The crew loaded Cosmos 1443’s VA capsule with 350 kg of experiment results and hardware no longer in use. It could have held 500 kg, had they had that much to put in. Cosmos 1443 then undocked, in spite of Western predictions that the FGB component would remain attached to Salyut 7 as a space station module. The VA capsule soft-landed on August 23, and the FGB component continued in orbit until it was deorbited over the Pacific Ocean on September 19.