Jul 30 1978
From The Space Library
The Washington Post reported that two Soviet cosmonauts had set a new Soviet space walk record on July 29, spending 125min outside the Salyut 6 space station testing a new type of suit and working with equipment mounted on the station, the accompanying Progress 2 supply ship, and their own Soyuz 29. Cosmonauts Vladimir Kovalenok and Alexander Ivanchenkov were the fourth team of cosmonauts to successfully board the Salyut 6 after it reached orbit the previous Sept. Kovalenok had filmed his colleague during part of the walk and had relayed the color footage to earth for broadcast on Moscow television.
Tass, the Soviet news agency, said the two cosmonauts had dismantled instruments and devices on the outer shell of Salyut 6, loading them into Soyuz 29 for shipment to earth, and had mounted new instruments, including devices to measure radiation, on the Salyut. Instruments being returned had measured micrometeor activities and had aided research on "polymers, optical and other structural material used in building advance spacecraft," Tass said. The report did not give details on the new space suit, but the cosmonauts said that their "semistiff" clothes were well designed and that life-support systems had been improved to facilitate movement and "better fixation outside the station." U.S. experts had interpreted the length of the Salyut mission and repeated trips to it by Soviet cosmonauts as indicating a focus by the Soviet space program on building permanent orbital platforms. The report had not indicated when the two cosmonauts would return to earth, but observers suggested that the next mission (Soyuz 30) would probably come soon and would be a marathon stay aboard the orbiting, station. (W Post, July 30/78, D10; FBIS, Tass in English, July 29/78)
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