Fwd: Humanity's Previous Ultra-Marathon Space Missions

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: January 9, 2015 at 11:31:34 AM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Humanity's Previous Ultra-Marathon Space Missions

Excellent article covering the history of long duration flight.

Gary

 

 

 

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
January 8th, 2015 

So 'Year' and Yet So Far: Humanity's Previous Ultra-Marathon Space Missions (Part 1)

By Ben Evans

 

The One Year Crew, from left: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Roscosmos cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. Photo Credit: NASA

As NASA and its international partners prepare for two briefings on Friday, 15 January, to discuss plans for the forthcoming One-Year Mission by U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly and Russia's Mikhail Kornienko to the International Space Station (ISS), it is important to recognize that their long voyage will be the first of its type to occur in the 21st century. However, no fewer than three ultra-long-duration missions of 366 days, 438 days, and 379 days were conducted by cosmonauts aboard the Soviet—and later Russian—Mir space station in the 1980s and 1990s, producing a wealth of biomedical data and demonstrating that humans could survive in the microgravity environment for extended periods. In fact, tomorrow (9 January) marks the 20th anniversary of Valeri Polyakov seizing the record for the longest single space mission, as he surpassed 366 days in orbit, headed for an eventual total of 14 months away from the Home Planet. It is a personal and empirical record that Polyakov still holds to this day. In this two-part series of articles, AmericaSpace looks back at how humanity has pushed its experience base in space from just a few hours in 1961 to more than an entire Earth-year away from the cradle of its birth.

Enduring longer and longer spells in the harsh conditions of low-Earth orbit has been a significant goal from the beginning of the Space Age. Ever since Yuri Gagarin's pioneering flight of 108 minutes on 12 April 1961, humanity has strived to make space less of a place to visit, and more of a place to live. Four months after Gagarin's mission, fellow Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov spent a day in orbit, followed, in August 1962, by Andrian Nikolayev's four days and in June 1963 by Valeri Bykovsky's five days. (In fact, Bykovsky still holds the world record for the longest period of time spent alone in space.) The United States then took the lead, with Gemini V astronauts Gordo Cooper and Charles "Pete" Conrad achieving eight days in August 1965 and Gemini VII's Frank Borman and Jim Lovell hitting 14 days the following December. This was the maximum flight duration expected for a round trip to the Moon, which was the primary goal of Project Apollo.

Yet longer durations would be required in order to reach further afield, particularly to eventually explore and settle Mars. In June 1970, Soyuz 9 cosmonauts Andrian Nikolayev and Vitali Sevastyanov eclipsed the U.S. record by spending 18 days aloft, but this was only the start. As part of its response to the triumph of Apollo, the Soviets developed the first Earth-orbital space station—Salyut 1—which was launched in April 1971 and successfully occupied by the crew of Soyuz 11 the following June. They returned to Earth after a record-setting 23 days, but were tragically killed when their spacecraft depressurized during an otherwise nominal re-entry. Hopes to stage longer missions (with Soyuz 12 originally expected to follow for about 45 days) were put on indefinite hold and the next Soviet crew would not launch until the fall of 1973.

Gemini VII prime crew members Frank Borman (right) and Jim Lovell (center) undergo a pre-flight physical check. Their 14-day mission was the longest in history when it took place in December 1965. Photo Credit: NASA

By this time, with the curtain having fallen on the Apollo lunar program, the United States had again taken the lead, with its three Skylab crews having pushed the empirical endurance records from one month to two months and finally to three months. The first crew, commanded by Pete Conrad and including Joe Kerwin and Paul Weitz, spent a difficult 28 days in orbit in May-June 1973, working to repair their crippled orbital home, whilst Al Bean and his crew of Owen Garriott and Jack Lousma battled space sickness and problems with their Apollo spacecraft to triumphantly secure 59 days away from the Home Planet between July and September. Finally, from November 1973 until February 1974, the final Skylab crew of Gerry Carr, Ed Gibson, and Bill Pogue secured an 84-day record which would remain unchallenged for four years.

That challenge was met and surpassed in the six-year downtime following the close of the Apollo era and the dawn of the shuttle era. From July 1975 until April 1981, no U.S. astronaut entered space and it was a period dominated by Soviet spectaculars, centered around Salyut 6, which is today recognized as perhaps the first truly "international" orbital station. Although the Soviets hosted "guest" cosmonauts from different nations, they tended to welcome only Warsaw Pact or Communist-aligned fliers—including Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Vietnam—whilst spending increasingly lengthier periods of time in orbit. In early March 1978, Soyuz 26 cosmonauts Yuri Romanenko and Georgi Grechko exceeded the 84-day record set by the final Skylab crew.

However, under air sports rules, enshrined by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), a new record would only be officially recognized if it eclipsed the previous record by more than 10 percent. As a result, Romanenko and Grechko needed to remain aloft for at least 93 days. As circumstances transpired, they landed after 96 days, which represented a 15-percent jump over the achievement of Carr's crew, and heralded the start of a chain of Soviet and Russian space endurance records which remains unbroken to this day, almost four decades later.

Whilst Ed Gibson elected not to grow a beard during his mission, his two crewmates, Bill Pogue (left) and Gerry Carr opted for the "Hairy Monster" look during their record-breaking 84-day mission to Skylab between November 1973 and February 1974. Photo Credit: NASA

In general, the missions which followed tended to stick to the FAI rules. Cosmonauts Vladimir Kovalyonok and Aleksandr Ivanchenkov launched aboard Soyuz 29 in June 1978 and returned in November, after 139 days, thereby eclipsing the record of Romanenko and Grechko by 40 percent. Next up was the Soyuz 32 mission of Vladimir Lyakhov and Valeri Ryumin from February-August 1979, which spent 175 days in orbit, and represented a 25-percent leap over its predecessor. The sole "anomaly"—if it could be so-called—was the Soyuz 35 mission of Leonid Popov and Valeri Ryumin between April-October 1980, which spent "only" 185 days in space, a mere 9 percent increase. Although the two cosmonauts did secure the absolute spaceflight endurance record, and held it until late 1982, they did so unofficially, for their achievement was unrecognized by the FAI.

And yet it scarcely mattered. With the absence of U.S. human spaceflight endeavor in the late 1970s, there was also precious little of the dreary political crowing from the Soviets which had previously greeted each of their spectacular missions. To be fair, there no longer needed to be. Ken Gatland of the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) summed up the general thinking: "Once the record is broken, the U.S. has little chance of regaining it for many years, because there is no ongoing space station program." Competition, for now, was dead.

However, returning to Earth's gravity after up to six months in orbit carried its own difficulties. When Lyakhov and Ryumin touched down, they found it hard to even bear the weight of a small bunch of flowers. Presented to them in celebration of their success, it felt like a giant sheaf of wheat, although their strength steadily returned after a week or so. For Popov and Ryumin, on the other hand, they returned in fine shape and were able to walk for 30 minutes, unaided, a day after touchdown, and played tennis together a week or so later. This was testament to a strict regime of exercise, particularly during the final couple of weeks of each mission. In the West, the detail of these flights was shrouded in secrecy, hidden behind the Iron Curtain, and consequently appeared somewhat dull. In a satirical cartoon from David Austin, published in New Scientist in September 1978, the routine of longer and longer missions was presented by a pair of NASA men, standing side by side. One of them held a newspaper, emblazoned with the headline that the Soviets had just secured another endurance record, and remarked: "Another long, boring shuffle forward for mankind!"

The Salyut 7 complex was the last "monolithic" Soviet space station, ahead of the "modular" Mir. Photo Credit: SpaceFacts.de/Joachim Becker

Boring, perhaps, from the perspective of lack of information, but necessary, for a little more than a decade hence, the United States would come to increasingly court Russian expertise as it sought to establish its own multi-national space station in orbit. The new Salyut 7 outpost, launched in April 1982, was first occupied by the Soyuz T-5 crew of Anatoli Berezovoi and Valentin Lebedev from May. Despite an illness suffered by Berezovoi in early November, which prompted some mutterings of an early end to their mission, the two cosmonauts exceeded the 175-day and 185-day records of their predecessors and returned to Earth on 10 December, after 211 days in orbit. It has been suggested by space analysts Phillip Clark, Dave Shayler, and the late Rex Hall that 7.5 months—maybe 225 days or more—was the original expectation, with Clark noting that Berezovoi and Lebedev took air samples of the Salyut 7 atmosphere, thus hinting at some form of atmospheric contamination, although this was never confirmed.

Whatever the reality, the cosmonauts certainly landed in highly undesirable circumstances. Their Soyuz capsule touched down in the hours of darkness, in the thick of a mid-winter blizzard, with weather forecasts predicting 13 mph (21 km/h) winds, temperatures of -9 degrees Celsius (15.8 degrees Fahrenheit), and visibility of no more than 6.2 miles (10 km). High winds dragged the descent module over a small incline, causing it to roll down a hill, exacerbating the discomfort of the cosmonauts, who had already been unable to undertake their normal pre-landing physical conditioning. One of the rescue helicopter pilots spotted their flashing beacon and made an unsuccessful attempt to land nearby. Eventually, ground vehicles were sent it to pick up Berezovoi and Lebedev.

Exactly when the next record was planned to be broken remains unclear, for 1983 turned into a troubled year for the Soviets, including one mission which failed to dock with Salyut 7 and another, in September, which suffered a launch vehicle explosion on the pad and very nearly claimed the lives of its two-man crew. Both of these unsuccessful flights, ironically, included cosmonaut Vladimir Titov, who would go on to become one of the first men to spend an entire Earth-year away from the Home Planet.

As circumstances transpired, it was the three-member crew of Soyuz T-10—Leonid Kizim, Vladimir Solovyov, and physician-cosmonaut Oleg Atkov—who pushed the 211-day endurance record toward the eight-month mark. Their flight, from February-October 1984, lasted a record-breaking 237 days, encompassed no fewer than six EVAs for repair and installation work and hosted two visiting crews. Certainly, the presence of Atkov was deliberate, as a means of monitoring the physiological and psychological adaptation of himself and his crewmates during the mission. (Interestingly, Valeri Polyakov served as Atkov's backup.) In their Springer-Praxis volume, Soyuz: A Universal Spacecraft, Rex Hall and Dave Shayler noted that Atkov's inclusion on Soyuz T-10 was part of a deliberate Soviet attempt to include a physician aboard every future record-setting duration mission.

Leonid Kizim during one of his EVAs outside Salyut 7 in 1984. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

This did not entirely come to pass. By the spring of 1985, plans were in work for a nine-month flight, featuring cosmonauts Vladimir Vasyutin, Viktor Savinykh, and Aleksandr Volkov, probably to be launched in May. According to Phillip Clark, it is possible that Valeri Polyakov may have been intended as the third-seater on a short visiting mission, later in the year, thereby providing the presence of a medical specialist to provide observation of the long-duration crew. However, all of these plans were thrown into disarray in February, when Salyut 7 lost all attitude controllability and a rescue crew of Savinykh and Vladimir Dzhanibekov were launched in June to revive its fortunes. They succeeded and a new crew of Vasyutin, Volkov, and Georgi Grechko was launched in September. Dzhanibekov and Grechko returned to Earth shortly afterwards, leaving Vasyutin, Savinykh, and Volkov aboard Salyut 7 until—it was hoped—the spring of 1986. Landing in mid-March, this would produce a mission of 282 days for Savinykh. Sadly, Vasyutin fell ill in November 1985 and the entire crew returned to Earth. Rather than a new empirical record of more than nine months, Savinykh came back home after 168 days. It would be left to another cosmonaut to push the Soviet Union's endurance capabilities further.

And the identity of that cosmonaut morphed and changed in late 1986 and early 1987. As will be discussed in tomorrow's AmericaSpace article, the new Mir space station would see the endurance records continue to fall like ninepins. By the end of 1987, a human being would have spent almost 11 months away from Earth and by the close of 1988 a full year would have been chalked up by another crew. It was the beginning of a series of flights which would begin to establish the kind of baseline medical data which will someday prove critical as humanity prepares to explore deep space and head for Mars.

 

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

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AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
January 9th, 2015 

So 'Year' and Yet So Far: Humanity's Previous Ultra-Marathon Space Missions (Part 2)

By Ben Evans

 

Valeri Polyakov, pictured at Mir's windows during the STS-63 shuttle rendezvous mission in February 1995, is the incumbent record-holder for the longest single spaceflight. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

Twenty years ago, today, on 9 January 1995, cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov seized the empirical crown for the longest single space mission in history, as he surpassed the previous record of 366 days away from the Home Planet. He was heading for an eventual goal of 14.5 months in orbit, aboard Russia's Mir space station, although his mission should have been even longer. "A big guy, an extroverted guy," was how U.S. astronaut Norm Thagard—who flew with Polyakov—described him, "but can be sort of like a bull in a china shop." By the time Polyakov returned to Earth on 22 March, he had accrued almost 438 days in space and, when combined with a previous 241-day mission, he currently ranks fifth on the list of the most experienced spacefarers of all time. Today, Polyakov's accomplishment for flying the longest single space voyage looks likely to remain unbroken for several years to come, but in March 2015 U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will launch to the International Space Station (ISS) to begin the first mission of the 21st century to approach 12 months in duration.

As outlined in yesterday's AmericaSpace article, breaking endurance records has been a mainstay of exploration since the dawn of the Space Age. From Yuri Gagarin's pioneering 108-minute voyage in April 1961 to Frank Borman and Jim Lovell's uncomfortable 14 days aboard Gemini VII in December 1965, and from the tragic 23-day mission of Soyuz 11 in June 1971 to the eight-month flight of Leonid Kizim, Vladimir Solovyov, and Oleg Atkov in February-October 1984, the records have fallen, and fallen again, like ninepins. By the dawn of 1986, as the United States began the slow process of recovery after the catastrophic loss of Challenger, the Soviet Union launched the Mir space station and set the pieces in place for a new salvo of extended duration human endeavors.

The man who pushed Russia's experience base in space beyond eight months ought not to have flown his mission at all. However, veteran cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko was accustomed to breaking records, having commanded the Soyuz 26 flight to the Salyut 6 space station between December 1977 and March 1978, whose 96-day length eclipsed the accomplishment of the final Skylab crew. At the end of 1986, Romanenko and his crewmate Aleksandr Laveykin were serving as backups to fellow cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Aleksandr Serebrov. Unfortunately, it appears that Serebrov failed a pre-flight medical test and, per Soviet rules, the entire prime crew was grounded in favor of their backups. In early February 1987, Romanenko and Laveykin launched aboard Soyuz TM-2, headed for Mir for what was expected to be an 11-month expedition. During their mission, the cosmonauts welcomed human visitors, as well as the Kvant-1 astrophysics module, but Laveykin was forced to return home early in July, following heart irregularities. Romanenko was joined for the remainder of his long mission by cosmonaut Aleksandr Aleksandrov.

Yuri Romanenko spent 326 days in orbit from February-December 1987. In addition to this empirical record, he was also a member of the Salyut 6 crew from December 1977 until March 1978 which snatched the world record from the United States. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

By October 1987, Romanenko surpassed the 237-day record of Kizim, Solovyov, and Atkov, as he pushed toward an end of his own mission before the dawn of 1988. In line with the air sports rules, enshrined by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), new records were only recognized if they eclipsed the previous record by more than 10 percent. A late December return to Earth by Romanenko would generate a substantial 35-percent uptake on the achievement of his predecessors.

However, Romanenko was growing weary and made his first complaint about fatigue to flight controllers. In one account, published by the journal Izvestiya on 2 October, he described his life aboard Mir: "I never used to notice noise from the fans at all," he said, "but now it sometimes wakes me up at night. Sometimes, I don't fall asleep right away in the evening, or I wake up in the middle of the night and then I'm not myself in the morning." Aleksandrov, treated him "considerately" in the rare instances when Romanenko overslept. If the commander grew more tired than normal during his workday, he took "medicine at night," on the orders of the flight surgeons. Certainly, reports in the Western press confirmed that their working day was reduced to around 5.5 hours.

According to Nurmukhamed Mukharlyamov, the head of the clinical department of the Soviet Union's National Cardiological Center, the psychological wellbeing of Romanenko and Aleksandrov was ensured through a balance of work and leisure, as well as regular exercise and a healthy diet to maintain vital elements, such as potassium and calcium. By early December, as Romanenko passed 300 days in orbit, his working day was reduced to just four hours and he was typically sleeping for nine hours per night and exercising for at least 2.5 hours on the treadmill. He also spent his free time singing Russian love songs.

Finally, a new crew arrived just before Christmas. Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov would attempt the first year-long mission in history, and were joined by Anatoli Levchenko for a short flight. However, the process of handing over Mir operations from the old crew to the new was a busy one and the exhausted Romanenko found his final days under immense pressure. On the 28th, he snapped and told flight controllers that he and Aleksandrov were "rushing around like squirrels in a wheel," trying to do what was demanded of them, and insisted that the "superfluous" scientists responsible for their experiments should be ejected from the control center. At length, on 29 December, Romanenko, Aleksandrov, and Levchenko returned safely to Earth. In wrapping up his mission, Romanenko secured a personal and empirical record of 326 days on a single flight.

Carrying Yuri Romanenko and his crewmates back to Earth, the Soyuz TM-3 descent module lies on its side after touchdown on 29 December 1987. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

Serious concerns were expressed about his health, although he was able to sit upright in the recovery helicopter and, amazingly, he completed a run, unaided, for 300 feet (100 meters), barely 24 hours after landing. He was also spotted walking in a park with his wife and a physician and appeared to be moving "very confidently." In Romanenko's mind, another hurdle had been cleared in the effort to send a crew to Mars.

That hurdle was further advanced in 1988 as Titov and Manarov sought to spend at least an entire Earth-year away from the Home Planet, with some speculation that they might even be aiming for 400 days, producing a landing as late as 24 January 1989. They welcomed two visiting crews in June and August 1988, one of whose members was Valeri Polyakov, kicking off his first long-duration mission. He would remain with Titov and Manarov for the remainder of their year-long flight, and would continue with Mir's next crew, into the late spring of 1989. By mid-December, Titov and Manarov reached 359 days in orbit, thereby securing the required 10 percent uplift on Romanenko's mission to satisfy the FAI. Several days later, alongside French visiting cosmonaut Jean-Loup Chrétien, they returned to Earth, after 365 days, 22 hours, and 38 minutes and 5,790 orbits of the planet.

In the aftermath of their landing, it would appear that the Soviets shifted focus to more standard, six-month endurance missions. One exception to this policy came in 1991, when the decision to fly a Kazakh citizen in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union required cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev to support not one, but two, back-to-back long-duration flights. Originally launched in May, Krikalev should have returned to Earth in October, but was obliged to join Aleksandr Volkov on a second crew and eventually landed in March 1992, after 312 days aloft. This produced a number of erroneous "Stranded in Space" stories, which were leapt upon by sectors of the world's media.

By this time, efforts were in place to stage a single voyage of up to 18 months. In mid-1993, the planning centered on launching Soyuz TM-18 on 16 November, carrying Viktor Afanasyev, Yuri Usachev, and Valeri Polyakov. After about six months, a new crew would be launched to replace Afanasyev and Usachev—who would return to Earth—and join Polyakov for the next stage of the 18-month mission. Unfortunately, budget cuts and problems with obtaining engines for the new Soyuz-U booster pushed the launch back by nearly eight weeks, until early January 1994. By this stage, plans to stage a shuttle-Mir docking mission in May 1995 had caused the return of Polyakov to be brought forward to March 1995, therefore producing a flight of 14 months. Backing up Polyakov was another physician-cosmonaut named Gherman Arzamazov and it has been reported over the years that relations between the pair became distinctly frosty. "Arzamazov says that Polyakov has not practiced medicine for a long time," Flight International noted in January 1994, quoting Russia's deputy health minister as saying that the disgruntled backup had "psychological problems." In any event, Arzamazov was discharged from the cosmonaut corps in the fall of 1995.

Pictured during training, Valeri Polyakov (left) launched aboard Soyuz TM-18 with crewmates Viktor Afanasyev (center) and Yuri Usachev. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

Launched on 8 January 1994, Afanasyev, Usachev, and Polyakov docked with Mir and undertook changeover duties with the resident crew, Vasili Tsibliyev and Aleksandr Serebrov. Six months later, in July, Afanasyev and Usachev returned to Earth and were replaced by Yuri Malenchenko and Talgat Musabayev, who were themselves replaced by Aleksandr Viktorenko and Yelena Kondakova in October-November, for the final phase of Polyakov's lengthy expedition. Together with his rotating crewmates, the physician supported 25 experiments, mainly in the life sciences.

Specific foci included the diet, the function of the human muscular system, the lungs and the immune system in the peculiar microgravity environment. Changes in the blood and central nervous system were examined, together with problems with metabolism, alterations in blood volume, and the function of the sense of balance in the inner ear. Other investigations explored calcium depletion in the bones, with the KARKAS "advanced vacuum trousers" used to draw blood into the abdomen to simulate the higher volumes in this area due to terrestrial gravity. Whilst Afanasyev and Usachev were aboard, Polyakov took measurements every third day of variations in the circumference of their legs, their blood pressure, their cardiac output and the changing position of their hearts. The cosmonauts' sleep patterns were also observed, as was their psychological behaviour, including reaction rates, short-term memory, and manual skills. Materials science, Earth observation, astrophysics, and biotechnology assignments also consumed a large portion of their time.

The conclusion of Polyakov's mission coincided with the arrival of NASA's first long-duration Mir resident, Norm Thagard, aboard Soyuz TM-21 in March 1995. In his oral histories, Thagard recalled that Polyakov was in a jubilant mood, keen to return home to his family, but that the cosmonaut took time to show him where everything was located aboard the space station. At length, on the 22nd, Viktorenko, Kondakova, and Polyakov boarded the Soyuz TM-20 spacecraft and returned safely to Earth. Polyakov's mission had lasted 437 days, 17 hours, and 58 minutes and had completed 6,927 orbits of Earth.

So excited was Polyakov to come home that Viktorenko had a hard time calming him down. "He was apparently being real rambunctious," recalled Thagard, "just listening to him on the radio, as they were undocking and flying around, before re-entering." Polyakov did not appear to have endured any negative effects from his 14.5 months in orbit and was even able to walk unaided from the Soyuz descent module to the chairs for transportation to a field hospital. He would also provide aerospace physicians with their closest possible analog for the effects of microgravity upon the human body during a voyage to Mars. Surpassing Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov's record with an uplift of 16 percent, Polyakov satisfied the requirements of the FAI and retains his place in the Guinness Book of Records.

Valeri Polyakov (right) participates in a medical experiment with German astronaut Ulf Merbold in October 1994. Photo Credit: Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

And there the story might have ended until the mission of Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko. By the early summer of 1998, with NASA pushing Russia to de-orbit Mir and devote its full attention to the construction of the International Space Station (ISS), it seemed that the old station would soon be abandoned. In early July, however, the Russian Government announced that it had allocated the necessary finances to permit further long-duration crews through June 1999. Soyuz TM-28 was duly launched in mid-August 1998, carrying cosmonauts Gennadi Padalka and Sergei Avdeyev, together with politician Yuri Baturin, the latter of whom returned to Earth after about a week.

It was already clear, virtually from the outset, that Avdeyev was targeted for a mission of at least 10 months in duration, making it not dissimilar to that of Sergei Krikalev, a few years earlier. The Soyuz TM-29 spacecraft, due for launch in February 1999, included two guest crewman—Jean-Pierre Haigneré of France and Ivan Bella of Slovakia—and a single Russian cosmonaut, Viktor Afanasyev, thereby requiring Avdeyev to serve a "double-duty" expedition. In August 1998, Flight International explained that Afanasyev's crew would "remain until June, just five days before [Mir] plunges to destruction" in the upper atmosphere, which would produce a 10-month mission for Avdeyev. By the end of 1998, it was obvious that Mir would remain in orbit beyond June 1999, and late the following February Soyuz TM-29 was launched and docked safely. Bella remained aboard the station for a week and returned to Earth with Padalka, leaving Afanasyev, Usachev, and Haigneré as the next crew until at least June, or, more likely, August.

Unfortunately, Russia's dire economic situation made it obvious that Soyuz TM-30, and cosmonauts Sergei Zalyotin and Aleksandr Kaleri would not launch to replace Afanasyev and his crew. This made it inevitable that Mir would mothballed—perhaps permanently—as it entered the twilight of its operational life. Certainly, Avdeyev was uncertain about whether another visiting crew would launch and even flight controllers described it as "unlikely." Finally, on the late evening of 27 August 1999, the cosmonauts board Soyuz TM-29 and returned to Earth in the small hours of the following morning. Avdeyev completed 379 days, 14 hours, and 52 minutes in flight, joining Titov, Manarov, and Polyakov as only the fourth person in history to spent in excess of one Earth-year in space.

And today, on the 20th anniversary of Valeri Polyakov becoming the incumbent record-holder for the longest single space mission, these four men form an exclusive club, which looks set not to be broken for some time to come. Even Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko will probably not see their much-trumpeted mission spend a full year away from the Home Planet: With liftoff planned on 27 March 2015 and landing scheduled for 3 March 2016, the two men will spend 342 days—or about 49 weeks—in orbit. Yet a return to ultra-marathon missions is a positive indicator of the importance placed by NASA and its International Partners on expanding the envelope of human endurance, in anticipation of returning people beyond low-Earth orbit and outward to the Moon and Mars.

 

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

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