Space: Moscow's Program Takes Off

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With the U.S. space program grounded indefinitely by the Challenger tragedy, the Soviet Union demonstrated once again last week that it is strongly forging ahead in space exploration. From the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Central Asia, the Soviets launched the first in a projected series of supply missions to their new manned space station called Mir (Peace). The unmanned cargo vessel Progress 25, boosted into orbit by a workhorse Proton rocket booster, hooked up on Friday with Mir, bringing food, fuel, water and other supplies to Cosmonauts Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyev, whose own Soyuz T-15 spacecraft docked with the orbiting space station on March 15.

To frustrated proponents of an expanded U.S. space effort, the latest Soviet achievements provoked an old rallying cry. "We've been Sputniked again," exclaimed Sandra Adamson, a director of the L5 Society, an organization formed to promote an all-out American effort to colonize and commercialize outer space. Adamson's reference was to the 1957 Soviet satellite launch, which galvanized the U.S. into the effort that culminated in the 1969 manned moon landing.

Such concern is overdrawn. Despite the Challenger calamity, American experts say, in many respects the U.S. space program is still ahead of its Soviet counterpart. Nonetheless, Moscow has racked up a number of major achievements in space over the past 2 1/2 years. Among them: a record 237-day manned flight by three cosmonauts aboard the Salyut 7 space station, a daring repair mission to restart that station after a near total power failure, and a highly sophisticated radar mapping of Venus by two robot Venera probes. Earlier this month the Soviets dazzled the international scientific community with their Vega 1 and Vega 2 inspections of Halley's comet. Each Vega flyby was preceded by a swing past Venus to drop an instrument-laden balloon into the planet's dense atmosphere.

Then came Mir. On March 13, the Soviets sent veteran Cosmonauts Kizim, 44, and Solovyev, 39, aloft on Soyuz T-15 to activate the space platform, which had been launched into a slightly elliptical 210-mile-high orbit three weeks earlier.* The subsequent rendezvous marked a milestone: the establishment of what the Soviets have heralded as the first permanently manned space station. According to current estimates, the first comparable U.S. station will not be operational before 1994.

As usual, the secretive Soviets have released little information on the exact specifications of the Mir station or on their long-range plans for its operation. Some scraps of information, however, are available. Mir, which measures 56 ft. by 13 ft., is 16 ft. longer than the Salyut 7 but only slightly wider. Since the new space station is not intended to house bulky experimental gear, it has much more living space inside. Crew members have separate "cabins," or cubicles, each equipped with a folding chair, a desk, a mirror and a sleeping bag. The common area of the space station's living unit features a dining table, a buffet built into a nearby bulkhead, and exercise equipment for the crew. The station is fitted with a large number of portholes, providing views from all four sides of Mir. One oversize porthole has been installed in the floor for viewing the earth's surface.