Science: Cosmic Champs

A space mark for the Soviets

The scenes were all too familiar to Americans: the crew drifting down under a huge striped parachute, mission controllers jubilantly congratulating one another. But it was a Soviet, not a U.S., space triumph that was being celebrated last week—the homecoming of Cosmonauts "Volodya" and "Sasha." Smashing all space endurance records, the Soviet Union's latest heroes, Vladimir Kovalenok, 36, and Alexander Ivanchenkov, 38, had returned safely to earth after nearly 140 days in space.

Soviet TV did not show any live pictures of the touchdown on a plain in Kazakhstan or the wobbly emergence of the men from their capsule after 4½ months of weightlessness. But a preliminary checkup showed that the cosmonauts had withstood their ordeal well, keeping in shape with rigorous exercises and the use of vacuum suits that forced their blood to circulate as if they were standing upright on earth. Encouraged by the results, Flight Director Alexei Yeliseyev contended that the Soviets could now send out manned space expeditions of practically unlimited duration.

Besides eclipsing the mark of 96 days set earlier this year by two other cosmonauts aboard the same Salyut 6 space station (the U.S. record is 84 days in orbit, set by a Skylab crew in 1974), Kovalenok, a Soviet air force colonel, and Ivanchenkov, his flight engineer, chalked up other feats. They played host to two visiting ships, one carrying an East German, the other a Polish cosmonaut. Resupplied three times by remote-controlled ferry craft, they conducted extensive observations of both the heavens and earth, and performed such experiments as growing crystals for electronic components and testing the effects of zero gravity on bacteria, and tried out a new, flexible space suit. All in all, said former Apollo-Soyuz Astronaut Tom Stafford, it was "a significant achievement."

NASA officials admitted that it will probably be years before the U.S. can equal the new mark. What made the triumph more galling is the fact that it was achieved with equipment far less advanced than the U.S. space shuttle, which is not scheduled to make its first orbital flight until late next year.