Concept
Soyuz 11 (Союз 11) was the only crewed mission to board the world's first space station, Salyut 1 The crew, Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev, arrived at the space station on 7 June 1971, and departed on 29 June 1971. The mission ended in disaster when the crew capsule depressurised during preparations for re-entry, killing the three-man crew. The three crew members of Soyuz 11 are the only humans to have died in space. The original prime crew for Soyuz 11 consisted of Alexei Leonov, Valeri Kubasov, and Pyotr Kolodin. A medical X-ray examination four days before launch suggested that Kubasov might have tuberculosis, and according to the mission rules, the prime crew was replaced with the backup crew. For Dobrovolski and Patsayev, this was to be their first space mission. After the failure of Salyut 2 to orbit, Kubasov and Leonov were reassigned to Soyuz 19 for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. Mass: Perigee: Apogee: Inclination: 51.6° Period: 88.3 minutes The Soyuz 7K-OKS spacecraft was launched on 6 June 1971, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the central Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, and used the callsign Yantar (Amber). Several months earlier, the first mission to the Salyut, Soyuz 10, had failed to successfully dock with the station. During the first day of the flight, manoeuvres were made to effect a rendezvous with the uncrewed Salyut (1971-032A). When Soyuz 11 was from Salyut, automatic devices took over, and in 24 minutes closed the gap between the two ships to and reduced the relative speed difference to . Control of the ships went from automatic back to manual at . Docking took 3 hours 19 minutes to complete and involved making the connection mechanically rigid, engaging various electrical and hydraulic links, and establishing air-tight seals before locks could be opened. When the pressure was equalized between the ships, the locks were opened and all three members of the crew passed into Salyut 1.
