Soyuz 23

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Soyuz 23
Mission statistics
Mission name	Soyuz 23
Crew size	2
Call sign	Радон (Radon - "Radon")
Launch date	October 14, 1976 17:39:18 UTC Gagarin's Start
Landing	October 16, 1976 17:45:53 UTC 195 km SW of Tselinograd
Mission duration	2d/00:06:35
Number of orbits	32
Related missions
Previous mission Next mission Soyuz 22 Soyuz 24

Soyuz 23 was intended to carry cosmonauts Vyacheslav Zudov and Valeri Rozhdestvenski to the Salyut 5 space station, presumably on an Almaz military mission. Although the Soyuz reached the station, a malfunction of the docking system did not allow a docking, similar to the problem experienced by Soyuz 15. Once again, by the time the automatic system had failed, there was no more fuel left for a manual docking and the mission had to be abandoned.

The spacecraft experienced a remarkable and near-catastrophic return to Earth. It descended onto a frozen Lake Tengiz in the middle of a snowstorm. The parachutes quickly filled with water, and dragged the capsule and its crew beneath the surface. Numerous attempts by recovery teams to reach it by amphibious vehicle failed. Inside the capsule, the heating had to be turned down in order to conserve power. Eventually, swimmers attached a cable to the capsule that allowed it to be dragged clear of the lake by a helicopter. The recovery team found the crew still alive.

Contents 1 Crew 1.1 Backup crew 1.2 Reserve crew 2 Mission parameters 3 External links

[edit] Crew

Number in parentheses indicates number of spaceflights by each individual prior to and including this mission.

• Vyacheslav Zudov (1) - Commander
• Valeri Rozhdestvensky (1) - Flight Engineer

[edit] Backup crew

• Viktor Gorbatko - Commander
• Yuri Glazkov - Flight Engineer

[edit] Reserve crew

• Anatoli Berezovoy - Commander
• Mikhail Lisun - Flight Engineer

[edit] Mission parameters

• Mass: 6760 kg
• Perigee: 239 km
• Apogee: 269 km
• Inclination: 51.6°
• Period: 89.5 min

[edit] External links

• about recovery operation from lake (in Russian)
• Tengiz Lake Drama (in Russian) with photos

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