Soyuz 8
Encyclopedia
Soyuz 8 was part of a joint mission with Soyuz 6
Soyuz 6
Soyuz 6 was part of a joint mission with Soyuz 7 and Soyuz 8 that saw three Soyuz spacecraft in orbit together at the same time, carrying seven cosmonauts...

 and Soyuz 7
Soyuz 7
Soyuz 7 was part of a joint mission with Soyuz 6 and Soyuz 8 that saw three Soyuz spacecraft in orbit together at the same time, carrying seven cosmonauts....

 that saw three Soyuz spacecraft
Soyuz spacecraft
Soyuz , Union) is a series of spacecraft initially designed for the Soviet space programme by the Korolyov Design Bureau in the 1960s, and still in service today...

 in orbit together at the same time, carrying seven cosmonaut
Astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....

s.

The crew consisted of commander Vladimir Shatalov
Vladimir Shatalov
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Shatalov is a former Soviet cosmonaut who flew three space missions of the Soyuz programme: Soyuz 4, Soyuz 8, and Soyuz 10....

 and flight-engineer Aleksei Yeliseyev
Aleksei Yeliseyev
Aleksei Stanislavovich Yeliseyev is a retired Soviet cosmonaut who flew on three missions in the Soyuz programme as a flight engineer: Soyuz 5, Soyuz 8, and Soyuz 10....

, whose mission was to dock with Soyuz 7 and transfer crew, as the Soyuz 4
Soyuz 4
Soyuz 4 was launched on January 14, 1969. On board the Soyuz 7K-OK spacecraft was cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov on his first flight. The aim of the mission was to dock with Soyuz 5, transfer two crew members from that spacecraft, and return to Earth...

 (involving, among others, these two cosmonauts) and Soyuz 5
Soyuz 5
Soyuz 5 was a Soyuz mission using the Soyuz 7K-OK spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union on January 15, 1969, which docked with Soyuz 4 in orbit...

 missions did. Soyuz 6 was to film the operation from nearby.

However, this objective was not achieved due to equipment failures. Soviet sources were later to claim that no docking had been intended, but this seems unlikely, given the docking adapters carried by the spacecraft, and the fact that both Shatalov and Yeliseyev were veterans of the previous successful docking mission. This was the last time that the Soviet crewed Moon landing hardware was tested in orbit, and the failure seems to have been one of the final nails in the coffin of the programme.

The radio call sign of the spacecraft was , meaning Granite. This word is apparently used as the name of a reactive or defensive squadron in Soviet military training, and, just like the Soyuz 5
Soyuz 5
Soyuz 5 was a Soyuz mission using the Soyuz 7K-OK spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union on January 15, 1969, which docked with Soyuz 4 in orbit...

, it was constructed and its crew was trained to be the responsive (not entirely passive) or female spacecraft in its docking. Giving military names to the spacecraft was probably a response to an appeal that the commander of the Soyuz 5 made. Further, the word was probably chosen as it begins with a letter following that sequence starting with (meaning Antaeus
Antaeus
Antaeus in Greek and Berber mythology was a half-giant, the son of Poseidon and Gaia, whose wife was Tinjis. Antaeus had a daughter named Alceis or Barce.-Mythology:...

) and (meaning Blizzard); Г (G) is the fourth letter of the Russian alphabet.

Crew

Backup Crew

Mission parameters

  • Mass: 6646 kg (14,651.9 lb)
  • Perigee: 201 km (124.9 mi)
  • Apogee: 227 km (141.1 mi)
  • Inclination: 51.7°
  • Period: 88.7 min
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