Soyuz | Soyuz 18
Soviet Space Program1/5 — Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of Kazakhstan
The launch vehicle successfully inserted its payload(s) into the target orbit(s).
mission
- Name
- Soyuz 18
- Type
- Human Exploration
- Target orbit
- Low Earth Orbit (LEO)
Soyuz 18 was the second and final crew to man the Salyut 4 space station. The mission began on May 24th 1975 at 1458:10 UTC, launching Commander Pyotr Klimuk & Flight Engineer Vitali Sevastyanov into orbit docking with Salyut 4 2 days later. They stayed on the station for 63 days setting a new Soviet space endurance record at the time. Klimuk & Sevastyanov were the back-up crew for the failed Soyuz 18a mission so their mission goals included completing the goals of Soyuz 18a, continuing the work of Soyuz 17 & fixing or replacing equipment. They replaced a gas analyzer, switched a pumping condenser in the water regeneration system with a hand pump & fixed a spectrometer. Mostly the experiments were biological & medical but they also studied stars, planets, earth and its atmosphere with roughly 2000 photographs of Earth and 600 of the sun taken. The mission concluded with a safe landing on June 26th 1975 at 1418:18 UTC.
schedule
- NET (no earlier than)
- Window opens
- Window closes
- Last updated
vehicle & provider
- Rocket
- Soyuz
- Family
- Soyuz
- Provider
- Soviet Space Program
- Type
- Government
- Country
- RUS
launch site
- Pad
- 1/5
- Location
- Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of Kazakhstan
- Country
- KAZ
- Timezone
- Asia/Qyzylorda
- Coordinates
- 45.9200, 63.3420