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Space stations
Salyut space station
Having reached the moon, US and Soviet efforts turned to creating a space station which stays permanently in orbit to serve as a base for scientific observation and experiment, for refueling spacecraft, or for launching satellites and missiles.
The Soviet built Salyut 1 was the first space-station put into orbit on April 19, 1971. The main purpose of Salyut 1 was to study the effects of long duration spaceflight on the human body and to take photographs of the Earth from space. The Salyut mission was originally called "Zarya", but this was renamed because the ground-call sign of the same name.
The first mission to Salyut called Soyuz-10 failed to dock with the station. The next mission was successful in docking and entering the station, but on the return due to to a tragic accident all three astronauts died. This prompted the Soviet scientists to make many changes to the Soyuz spacecrafts, but these changes couldn't be implemented for at least two years and in early October re-entered the atmosphere and burned up.
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Skylab
 | "Apollo Applications Program" later changed to "Skylab" was the name give to the program of the United States to launch a space station. Launched on May 14, 1973, Skylab sustained damages due to the launch vibrations. A crew was launched in Skylab 2, to repair the damages sustained to the station. This and two more crews conducted experiments in geography, engineering, earth resources, biomedicine, and other scientific areas in and from Skylab between May 25, 1973, and Feb. 8, 1974, for a total of 171 days in space. In June 1978, it wavered from it's orbit and broke into the atmosphere. On July 11, 1979, it re-entered and the debris fell on the Indian Ocean and parts of south-western Australia.
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Apollo-Soyuz test project
The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was the first rendezvous between two spacecrafts and the first internationally manned mission. Signed by U.S. President Nixon and Soviet Union Premier Kosygin on May 24, 1972, the existing Apollo and Soyuz spacecrafts were to be used and were to dock by the NASA built docking module. On July 15, 1975, the Soyuz-19, carrying cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov and seven and a half hours later the Apollo-18 carrying astronauts Tom Stafford, Deke Slayton and Vance Brand were launched. Slayton was one of the 7 astronauts in the Mercury project, but due to a heart condition he couldn't and went on the ASTP. Shortly after the Apollo liftoff, he told mission control, "Man, I tell you, this is worth waiting 16 years for."
On July 17, 1975, the Apollo and Soyuz crafts performed a perfect docking. The spacecrafts remained docked for 2 days while the astronauts and cosmonauts conducted a total of 28 joint Earth survey, astronomical, medical, and technical experiments. A handlettered sign that read "Welcome to Soyuz" invited the astronauts onto the Soviet spacecraft. The men exchanged gifts, such as flags, and signed the official records for the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. On July 19, the two undocked and Soyuz landed in the USSR on the July 21, while the Apollo crew remained in orbit for 5 days and finally landing near Hawaii on July 24. The American astronauts were accidentally exposed to nitrogen tetroxide gas during their reentry. As a result, they experienced chest tightness, coughing, a burning sensation when they breathed and an inability to breathe deeply, but all three were unharmed.
Mir space station
 | The Russian word for "peace", "Mir", is the space station, the core of which was launched in February 20, 1986. Mir is the successor of the Salyut space stations (8 total). Besides its six docking ports, Mir features expanded living quarters, greater available power, and modernized research equipment. Mir was to be completed by 1990, but it's modules - Kvant("Quantum") 1, Kvant 2, Kristall("Crystal"), Spektr("Spectrum") and Priroda("Nature") got delayed and it got completed only in 1996. Investigations performed aboard the station include space technology experiments, remote sensing and environmental monitoring, life science and biological research, astrophysics studies, material processing tests, and medical and biotechnology experiments. |
A record set by a Mir crew member in 1987 for the longest time (326 days) spent in space was broken (366 days) by two other Mir cosmonauts in December 1988, but these feats were far surpassed by Mir crewman Valery Polyakov, who returned to Earth on March 22, 1995, after having spent 438 days in space. The aging Mir station suffered a series of equipment failures and accidents in 1996-97 but still remains in service.
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