Slanderous Salyut-7 documentary

[B. Hendrickx]

The other day I accidentally came across a Russian documentary called “Bitva za Salyut : kosmicheskiy detektiv” (“Battle for Salyut : A Space Detective Story”). The film was produced by the Russian space agency’s film studio (Teleradiostudia Roskosmosa) and was aired on Russian television in 2011. It is now available on the website of the Roskosmos television studio :

http://tvroscosmos.ru/frm/films/salut.php

The film is about the loss of control over the Salyut-7 space station while it was flying unmanned in February 1985 and the subsequent Soyuz T-13 rescue mission flown by Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savinykh in June 1985.  Expecting a decent Roskosmos documentary, I watched in growing disbelief as it became clear what the real purpose of the documentary was, namely to convince viewers that the US wanted to snatch Salyut-7 from orbit using the Space Shuttle before the Russians could mount a rescue mission, apparently to steal  “military secrets” from the Russians.   

The story goes as follows (I will not bother to comment on all the obvious inaccuracies and plain lies). On 11 February 1985, only hours after Salyut-7 fell silent, the director of the National Security Agency Lincoln Faurer called President Reagan in the middle of the night to inform him of the fact that Salyut-7 was out of control and “lost in space”. When Reagan asked if there was anything he could do about this,  Faurer told the President that with his permission the upcoming launch of Space Shuttle Challenger (on mission STS 51-E ) could be delayed, making it possible to change the flight programme such that the Shuttle would capture Salyut-7 in orbit and bring it back to Earth. There is no written evidence that Reagan gave the order to capture Salyut-7, the narrator goes on to say, (“all the related documents are still classified”), but subsequent events showed that such an order had indeed been given and it would bring the world “on the brink of World War Three”.

The Russians weren’t immediately alarmed by the failure. About six months were left until Salyut would make an uncontrolled re-entry, giving them enough time to come up with a rescue plan. However, things changed on 24 February, when Minister of Defense Dmitriy Ustinov was informed by the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) that two French astronauts had been included in “the new Challenger crew”, namely Patrick Baudry (prime) and Jean-Loup Chrétien (back-up).  Both had earlier trained for a mission to Salyut-7 (flown by Chrétien in 1982) and therefore knew the station very well. Baudry’s expertise, the Russians reasoned, was needed in a US attempt to “kidnap” Salyut-7 in orbit.

Subsequently, a meeting of “general designers and the government” decided to launch the rescue mission as soon as possible, before the Americans could lay their fingers on Salyut-7. Time was running out because at least three months would be needed to prepare the rescue mission and Challenger “was already about to be rolled out to the pad”. 

However, with only hours to go before the launch of Challenger on 10 March, NASA decided to push back the launch to late April. Officially, this was for technical reasons, but the real reason was the death of Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko earlier that same day. As long as the ailing Chernenko was in power, the Americans were confident that the Russians would not respond to the capture of Salyut-7 with a nuclear strike. However, in the power vacuum following the death of Chernenko the Soviet response became unpredictable and the Americans considered it prudent to delay the capture mission.

Eventually, Challenger was launched on 29 April 1985 on a new mission (51-B/Spacelab-3) during which it made a close rendezvous with Salyut-7, allowing the crew to make a photographic inspection of the station ahead of the capture mission, now rescheduled for STS 51-G in June (that mission would be flown by Baudry’s crew after the cancellation of 51-E). Two experts (Sergei Sergeyev, a ballistics expert of TsENKI, and Sergei Shayevich of the Khrunichev Center) are shown claiming that the slight difference in inclination between Salyut-7 and Challenger should not have prevented the Shuttle from doing the rendezvous. Moreover, returning from orbit with the heavy Spacelab module in the cargo bay was a good simulation of the Salyut-7 capture mission. Actually, it was not the first time Challenger had come close to Salyut-7. The Shuttle had already “flown to Salyut-7’s orbit” during the 41-G mission in October, during which it had retrieved “a small US spy satellite”, “the first step in a secret programme to retrieve ‘uncooperative’ objects from orbit”  (footage is shown of the deployment of the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite on 41-G).

Even after the Soyuz T-13 rescue mission was launched on 6 June, preparations continued for the 51-G mission to capture Salyut-7 in orbit. The Americans were convinced that the Soviet rescue effort would fail (after all, they themselves had failed to rescue Skylab before it re-entered) and that at least one of the cosmonauts would perish, so one seat aboard Discovery was left vacant to save the surviving cosmonaut (so it would appear 51-G itself had now turned into a rescue mission). However, Dzhanibekov and Savinykh  were able to restore power aboard Salyut-7, thereby “saving the station and the country”. After they were shown on Soviet TV talking about their flight, it was clear to the Americans that the rescue mission was no longer needed. Instead, 51-G was launched on 24 June to deploy “four Mexican communications satellites”.  Baudry is shown saying he was not aware at the time of the actual objectives of the Soyuz T-13 mission (which weren’t fully revealed by the Russians until August), but the narrator casts doubt on that claim. End of story.

I wonder if Baudry, Savinykh, Dzhanibekov and other people shown in the film (including cosmonaut Valeriy Ryumin and deputy flight leader Viktor Blagov) were given a chance to see the documentary before it was aired. Clearly, their comments are placed out of context to support false claims. For instance, at one point (18:55 into the documentary) Savinykh says that in his archives he had never found an in-orbit picture of Salyut-7 taken “before his arrival at the station” until he got three such pictures from a US philatelist, clearly showing “that very Salyut to which we flew”. What he’s apparently trying to say is that the pictures were taken while Soyuz T-13 was approaching the station, but that for some reason he had never seen them himself.  However, his words are interpreted as meaning that the pictures must have been taken several weeks prior to the Soyuz T-13 mission by the Challenger 51-B crew (after all, they were sent to Savinykh by an American…).

This documentary is way below standard and certainly doesn’t belong on a website run by the Russian space agency.  Amazingly, it won an award at an international detective film festival in Moscow in April 2012. Whoever came up with the scenario may indeed want to apply for a job in Hollywood.       

The documentary was already scrutinized on the Novosti kosmonavtiki forum in 2011, but escaped my attention at the time :

http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/forum/forum14/topic12354/

I thought it was worth bringing it to the attention of a non-Russian audience.