Soyuz 23

Mass: 6760 kg
Perigee: 239 km
Apogee: 269 km
Inclination: 51.6°
Period: 89.5 min

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Soyuz 23**
Mission statistics
Mission name:	Soyuz 23
Call sign:	Радон (Radon - "Radon")
Number of crew members:	2
Launch:	October 14, 1976 17:39:18 UTC Baikonur LC1
Landing:	October 16, 1976 17:45:53 UTC 195 km SW of Tselinograd
Duration:	2 days, 0 h, 6 min, 35 s
Number of Orbits:	32

Soyuz 23 was intended to carry cosmonauts Vyacheslav Zudov and Valeri Rozhdestvenski to the Salyut 5 space station, presumably on an Almaz military mission. Although the Soyuz reached the station, a malfunction of the docking system did not allow a docking, similar to the problem experienced by Soyuz 15. Once again, by the time the automatic system had failed, there was no more fuel left for a manual docking and the mission had to be abandoned.

The spacecraft experienced a remarkable and near-catastrophic return to Earth. It descended onto a frozen lake in the middle of a snowstorm. The parachutes quickly filled with water, and dragged the capsule and its crew beneath the surface. Numerous attempts by recovery teams to reach it by amphibious vehicle failed. Inside the capsule, the heating had to be turned down in order to conserve power. Eventually, swimmers attached a cable to the capsule that allowed it to be dragged clear of the lake by a helicopter. The recovery team found the crew still alive.