This article is about the 1970 mission. For the mission identified by NASA as ISS Soyuz 9, see
Soyuz TMA-5.
Soyuz 9 (Russian: Союз 9, Union 9) was a 1970 Soviet manned space flight. The two-man crew of Andrian Nikolayev and Vitali Sevastyanov broke the five-year-old space endurance record with their nearly 18-day flight. The mission paved the way for the Salyut space station missions, investigating the effects of long-term weightlessness on crew, and evaluating the work that the cosmonauts could do in orbit, individually and as a team.
[edit] Backup Crew
[edit] Reserve Crew
[edit] Mission Highlights
Soyuz-9 on the 1971
USSR commemorative stamp "424 hours On Earth's Orbit"
Commander Andrian Nikolayev and flight-engineer Vitaly Sevastyanov spent eighteen days in space conducting various physiological and biomedical experiments on themselves, but also investigating the social implications of prolonged spaceflight. The cosmonauts spent time in two-way TV links with their families, watched the World Cup football game, played chess (including this chess game with the crew as white; it was the first chess game played across space) with ground control, and voted in a Soviet election. The mission set a new space endurance record and marked a shift in emphasis away from spacefarers merely being able to exist in space for the duration of a long mission (such as the Apollo flights to the moon) and being able to live in space.
On their return to Earth, the crew was found to have weakened considerably, and it took some ten days for them to regain their strength. In orbit, they had sacrificed some of their exercise time for the sake of carrying out their scientific work, and their bodies' reactions to the prolonged weightlessness emphasised the importance of maintaining regular exercise.
[edit] Mission parameters
- Mass: 6590 kg (14,530 lb)
- Perigee: 176 km (109 mi)
- Apogee: 227 km (141 mi)
- Inclination: 51.6°
- Period: 88.5 min
[edit] References
