Soviet-era cosmonaut Vyacheslav Zudov, whose failed docking with a Russian space station ended with the first and only emergency landing in a Soyuz spacecraft, has died at the age of 82.
Zudov’s death on Wednesday (June 12) was reported by Roscosmos, Russia’s federal space agency.
“[His] The two-day space flight was, without exaggeration, dramatic,” a statement from the space agency said. “The landing of ‘Radon’ (the call sign the cosmonaut chose for himself) turned out to be no less dangerous.”
Zudov was selected for the cosmonaut corps with the Soviet Air Force’s third group of recruits in October 1965 and was chosen to command his first and, what would turn out to be, his only space flight. On October 14, 1976, he and Pilot met Valery Rozhdestvensky launched aboard Soyuz 23 during a stay of at least two weeks, if not two to three months, on the Salyut 5 space station.
The Soyuz 23 flight was intended as a return to the outpost’s orbiting operations after a previous Soyuz crew was forced to end their mission earlier that year. Instead, Zudov and Rozhdestvensky faced a similar outcome.
During their approach to Salyut 5, the autonomous docking system failed, preventing Zudov and Rozhdestvensky from reaching the space station. They were trained in manual docking, but could not fly a rendezvous. The two cosmonauts abandoned their mission and were limited by the Soyuz’s battery reserves. They spent a day in orbit and then began their descent back to Earth.
The Soviet Union developed the Soyuz for land landing, using a main parachute and braking engines to achieve a “soft” landing. Cosmonauts did train for unforeseen water landings, but such a landing had yet to take place.
Soyuz 23 aimed for a landing near its launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome (today in Kazakhstan), but the weather did not cooperate and the spacecraft crashed 2 kilometers from the shore of Lake Tengiz, which in mid-October was already partially frozen. Complicating matters further, the Soyuz’s main parachute failed to release and the reserve canopy deployed inadvertently. Once saturated, both chutes acted as an anchor, pulling the capsule underwater.
Although rescue teams were able to reach the site, local conditions delayed their access to the capsule. Zudov and Rozhdestvensky had to turn off the power and remain in the spacecraft for several hours until their descent module could be towed out of the water and onto solid land.
Zudov and Rozhdestvensky were cold but healthy. They logged a total of 2 days and 6 minutes in space.
Vyacheslav Dmitriyevich Zudov was born on January 8, 1942 in Bor, a city on the left bank of the Volga opposite Nizhny Novgorod in Russia. He graduated from the Higher Military Pilot School in Balashov in 1963 and became a military transport pilot in the Soviet Air Force.
In addition to his own Soyuz 23 mission, Zudov served as a backup commander for the Soyuz 15, Soyuz 21, Soyuz 35, and Soyuz T-4 missions before retiring from the cosmonaut corps on May 14, 1987.
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For his services to the space program, Zudov was named Hero of the Soviet Union and was awarded the Order of Lenin.
Zudov was married to Nina Nikitina and together they had two daughters, Natalya and Yelena. He was preceded in death by his Soyuz 23 crewmate, Rozhdestvensky, who died in 2011.
A memorial service for Zudov will be held Friday (June 14) at the Federal Military Memorial Cemetery, a national cemetery of Russia, located on the northeastern outskirts of Moscow.
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