Later, bigger craft, such as the Russian Salyuts and the US Skylab, provided more spacious living and working accommodation for long periods. Skylab and the later Salyuts proved spectacularly successful. They were the first space stations. Russia's latest station, Mir, is being built up, module by module, into an increasingly large complex. The European-built space laboratory Spacelab is also carrying out valuable work in orbit.
The first space station, Russia's Salyut 1, was launched into orbit on 19 April 1971, and was first inhabited six weeks later by the three-man crew of Soyuz 11. They spent nearly 24 days in Salyut 1, smashing all space duration records. Tragically they were killed when returning to Earth when their cabin accidentally depressurized at high altitude.
It was a bad start for the Salyut space-station programme, which did not meet with real success until Salyut 6 was launched in 1977. It was built of cylinders of different sizes, the biggest some 4 m across. It measured nearly 15 m long. It differed from earlier Salyuts in having two docking ports, one at each end.
In December 1977 and January 1978 two Soyuz craft flew up and docked at these ports, making the first triple link-up in space history. It showed the way ahead. A few days later, a remote-controlled cargo ship called Progress docked automatically with Salyut at a port vacated by one of the Soyuz. It brought up fresh supplies of fuel, food and mail, much welcomed.
By using automatic Progress ferries, Russia solved the problem of supporting
the cosmonauts on long-stay missions. These missions grew longer and longer
- up to 140 days in 1978 and 185 days in 1980. In 1982 Salyut 7 took over,
and the space duration record continued to tumble. In 1984 came a 236-day
mission nearly eight months. And the cosmonauts still did not suffer any
long-term ill-effects from the prolonged weightlessness. This was good
news for the future of human space travel.