Plight of Soyuz Raises Tough Questions

Tough questions were being asked Wednesday about crew safety in the Soviet Union’s manned space program after the troubled return of two cosmonauts from the orbiting space laboratory Mir.

Although the two landed safely in Soviet Central Asia, space officials were being asked why supposedly “fail-proof” automatic systems aboard the Soyuz spacecraft failed twice, jeopardizing its return, and why the crew did not use manual controls to return to Earth a day sooner.

Soviet journalists congratulated Vladimir Lyakhov, a veteran Soviet cosmonaut, and Abdul Ahad Mohmand, an Afghan pilot who accompanied him on the 10-day mission, but pressed them hard for explanations of the two earlier failures to return to Earth that left them short of oxygen, water and internal power.

‘It Was Resolved’

“What was the fuss about?” Lyakhov asked. “Everything was normal. There was a problem, but it was resolved.

“For us, the real problem was never safety but comfort,” he said. “Sitting in spacesuits, in one position and unable to relax, is not an easy thing, and another 24 hours this way was not part of our plan. But it was not a dangerous situation, and we were always in control.”

Similar questions were posed by the government newspaper Izvestia in a front-page article that broke with tradition in directly questioning the manned space program’s operating procedures.

Why, Izvestia asked, had the spacecraft’s automatic orientation system failed in the first place, and why did it then permit a brief firing of the spacecraft’s braking rockets, thus significantly altering its course?

Earlier Flight Data

Also, when the spacecraft crew and scientists at the mission control center here tried to reorient the spacecraft and attempt another landing, Izvestia asked, why had the Soyuz computer provided data from an earlier flight?

And finally, it asked, when Lyakhov saw that the automatic controls and the computer had failed twice to function correctly, why did he not immediately use the manual controls, knowing that the spacecraft had limited oxygen, water and internal power?

The answer to the last question came from Vladimir A. Dzhanibekov, chief of cosmonaut training, who told the Communist Party newspaper Pravda that the cosmonauts’ training had not included instructions on what to do in such a situation simply because it was regarded as too remote a possibility.

“There hasn’t been anything like this before, but now life has pushed it onto us,” said Dzhanibekov, a former cosmonaut.

Other officials acknowledged that there were “unforeseen interconnections” among the blocks of data put into the spacecraft’s computers and that these links had caused some of the problems in the automatic equipment.

Reminder of Danger

Although officials attempted to minimize the danger to the cosmonauts, Soviet commentators soberly acknowledged that the unexpected problems were a reminder of how dangerous space flight is.

“We are already used to everything going smoothly in space,” commentator Alexander Tikhomirov told Soviet television viewers. “Some forget about the danger that space research entails. And this . . . convinces us how complex a matter it is and what a great number of abnormal situations await cosmonauts in orbit.”

Concern over the two cosmonauts’ fate had grown after the Soviet media reported that the life-support systems aboard the Soyuz capsule would have lasted only until this morning.

The small spacecraft is designed for transporting cosmonauts to and from space, officials noted, and it carries supplies and power for only a few days.

A Soviet official said Wednesday that the cosmonauts in fact could have stretched the supply of oxygen, water and food for up to a week, but that after that, the Soyuz capsule would have become like “a lone boat in the ocean.”

Close to Target

Izvestia noted that despite earlier problems with the guidance system, the spacecraft landed within only a few dozen miles of the intended target--but 24 hours late.

Soviet space scientists said the bright rays of the morning sun had interfered with a sensor in an infrared guidance system as the spacecraft crossed from night into day, preventing the automatic orientation system from working, and that a computer then cut short the firing of braking rockets. The second attempt failed because the on-board computer had not been reprogrammed.

Had the crew gone ahead with those attempts, the capsule might have landed in China, 435 to 500 miles from the intended zone. Thus, the mission control center ordered further landing attempts put off until scientists could reprogram the on-board computers.

Lyakhov said the main concern aboard the spacecraft was the lack of toilet facilities, though Soviet officials said, more discreetly, that they were worried that the two men would be uncomfortable in their spacesuits for such a long period.

Fatal Mission in 1971

The last fatal Soviet space disaster occurred on June 30, 1971. Three cosmonauts had docked with the Salyut-1 space station and, during re-entry into the atmosphere, air leaked out of their capsule and they suffocated.

Four years earlier, a space capsule crash-landed and the occupant was killed, but Soviet officials have never explained exactly what went wrong. Western space experts believe that as many as eight other cosmonauts have been killed in training.

The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Parliament, on Wednesday awarded Lyakhov the Order of the October Revolution. Mohmand was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Soviet government, and will later get the Order of Lenin. Lyakhov holds both from previous space flights.