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Salyut-3 (Almaz OPS-2) space station In 1974, the Soviet Union launched a space station publicly identified as Salyut-3. In reality, it was the second military laboratory within the Almaz project but disguised as a civilian Salyut series. After the end of the Cold War, it was revealed that Salyut-3 had carried a self-defense gun that fired in orbit.
Almaz OPS-2 station at a glance:
OPS-2 (Salyut-3) space station A two-day test mission of the Soyuz spacecraft, developed specifically for the Almaz program, preceded the launch of the OPS-2 station. The 7KT version of the Soyuz was launched without crew on May 27, 1974, and was announced as Kosmos-656. (INSIDER CONTENT) (52) A month later, on June 25, 1974, after a night-long struggle on the launch pad with electrical problems in the interface between the station and its rocket, the OPS-2 space station, lifted off from a "left-hand" launch pad at Site 81 in Baikonur . It was announced as Salyut-3. (100) Official Soviet sources disclosed that the new station was equipped with an "electro-mechanical" attitude control system, or gyrodines; rotating solar arrays; an "improved" thermal control system, and that it featured separate areas for work and rest. (71) The first use of a water-recycling facilities, and of unmanned reentry capsules was also acknowledged. (2) The post-Soviet sources (134) listed following payloads onboard OPS-2:
Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich, who trained for the Almaz mission and later manned the station, recalled in an interview with the Novosti Kosmonavtiki magazine that the station carried 14 different cameras in all. (153) The station was also equipped with a "self-defense" gun developed at a design bureau led by Nudelman. The weapon was installed in the front section of the station and in order to point it at the target crew had to change the attitude of the entire station. During ground test firing, the gun was able to split in half a metal container. At the same time, the firing caused considerable shaking of the station itself, therefore in-orbit tests of the weapon during manned operations were ruled out.
On July 3, 1974, the Soyuz-14 mission carried what was announced as an expedition to the newly launched Salyut-3 space station. In fact, it was a specialized military team heading to the Almaz OPS-2 orbital observation outpost publicly camouflaged behind the civilian space station program. For the first time, a piloted military orbiter armed with a self-defense gun and an array of reconnaissance equipment operated in space.
On Aug. 26, 1974, the USSR launched the second expedition to the Almaz OPS-2 military space station. However, commander Gennady Sarafanov and flight engineer Lev Demin failed to dock their Soyuz-15 spacecraft to the outpost, narrowly avoiding a high-speed collision. The crew then urgently headed home after just two days in orbit. The OPS-2's pilotless mission
Due to lengthy modifications in the wake of Soyuz-15's docking problems, no further expeditions to the Salyut-3 could be staged. A small film capsule was jettisoned from the OPS-2 on September 23, 1974 and the station was deorbited on January 24, 1975, over the Pacific Ocean. According to official Soviet sources, the seven-month flight of the Salyut-3 exceeded more han twice the originally planned flight duration. Soviet publications also disclosed that the Salyut-3 was the first space station to maintain constant orientation relative to the Earth surface. To achieve that, as many as 500,000 firings of the attitude control thrusters had been performed. (152) This fact also hinted to Western observers that the Salyut-3 had perhaps carried out a reconnaissance mission. Years later it was revealed that shortly before deorbiting OPS-2, ground controllers commanded the "self-defense" gun onboard the station to fire. The firings were conducted in the direction opposite to the station's velocity vector, in order to shorten the "orbital life" of the cannon's shells. A total of three firings were conducted during the OPS-2 mission. (72) |
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