Soyuz

Soyuz 17
Mission Statistics
Mission Name:Soyuz 17
Call Sign:Зенит (Zenit - "Zenith")
Number of Crew Members:2
Launch:January 11, 1975
21:43:37 UTC
Baikonur
Landing:February 10, 1975
11:03:22 UTC
110km NE of Tselinograd
Duration:29 days, 13 h, 19 min, 45 s
Number of Orbits:479

Crew

Mission Parameters

  • Mass: 6800 kg
  • Perigee: 185 km
  • Apogee: 249 km
  • Inclination: 51.6°
  • Period: 88.8 min

Mission highlights

Soyuz 17 carried cosmonauts Georgi Grechko and Aleksei Gubarev to the Salyut 4 space station for a month-long stay. Upon entering the new station, they found a humorous note from its builders, telling them to "Wipe your feet!"

When Soyuz 17 docked, Salyut 4 was in an unusually high circular orbit at 350 km. Astrophysics was a major component of their mission (hence the high altitude). The crew discovered that the main mirror of the solar telescope had been ruined by direct exposure to sunlight when the pointing system failed. They resurfaced the mirror and worked out a way of pointing the telescope using a stethoscope, stopwatch, and the noises the moving mirror made in its casing.33

Experiments carried out on board the station were mostly of an astronomical nature, with observations of the Sun, the Earth, and the planets.

Previous Mission:
Soyuz 16		 Soyuz programme Next Mission:
Soyuz 18a


This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia article. Browse Wikipedia for more information.