When the sixth spacecraft in the Soviets' pre-Mir space station program was deorbited on July 29, 1982, the USSR already had a new station in space to work with -- the Salyut 7 had been launched three months earlier.
The design of the newest station's solar panels allowed for the installation of additional sections to increase its power supply.
Soviet designers also hoped to eventually equip Salyut 7 with gyrodines, or complex electrically-driven wheels to allow the station to orient itself without propellant. Designers expected the gyrodines to be sent to Salyut 7 aboard a special module that also would carry a permanent astronomy payload -- Kvant 1.
Delays in development, however, kept Kvant 1 on the ground until the Mir space station was launched.
However, the Salyut 7 crews further pushed the limits of human space flight. By 1986, four long-duration crews and five shorter-term crews had lived onboard the station.
As is often the case in space exploration, some of the most valuable lessons of the Salyut-7 were its failures.
One day in September 1983, fuel started spilling from a propellant line, apparently because of damage from a meteor strike. The crew working onboard Salyut 7 in 1984 performed surgical work on the outside of the station, isolating the damaged portion of the line and installing a bypass segment into the system.
On February 11, 1985, as Salyut 7 was flying unmanned, a ground controller accidentally cut off communications with the station. Salyut 7 was left out of control and totally disabled. All that could be done was to track the location of the station with defense radar.
A rescue crew, including Vladimir Djanibekov and Valeri Savinukh, was launched to Salyut 7 on June 6, 1985. For the first time ever, a crew manually docked to a totally disabled space station. When the cosmonauts entered the station, they found their future home with no lights, heat, power or radio equipment working. Large icicles hung from the life support system pipes, and all water aboard the station had frozen.
As the cosmonauts' own limited supply of water and food was running out, an intense operation rehabilitated the facility. Salyut 7 was in working order by the beginning of 1986, while at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, processing crews were preparing a new station for launch.
But this was no Salyut.
On February 20, 1986, the USSR announced the launch of the space station Mir.
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