November 1982:milestones

May 1982

20 NASA establishes a Space Station Task Force headed by John Hodge
(originally from London) and Bob Freitag (a long-standing Fellow of the BIS).
The aim is to produce a permanent US space station by the early 1990’s.

22 An agreement is signed which will allow an Indian remote sensing satellite
to be launched by tne Soviets in the mid-1980’s.

23 Progress 13 is launched to carry supplies to Salyut 7/Soyuz T-5. It docks
with the station on 25 May. Konstantin Feoktistov, spacecraft designer and
ex-cosmonaut, says that there is little difference between Salyuts 6 and 7.

June 1982

3 Cosmos 1374 is launched at 21.30 GMT from Kapustin Yar. It is reported
to be a winged shuttle scale model; it reenters after one revolution at
98°E from a 230x191 km, 49.6° inclination orbit.

8 The Westar 5 communications satellite is launched by a Delta 3910/PAM
from Cape Canaveral.

19 Meteosat 2, the European meteorological satellite, completes its first year in
orbit. It continues to return visible, infrared and water vapour views of the
Earth from its geostationary position at 0° longitude. The relaying of data
from remote platforms has had to be continued by Meteosat 1 after the
transponder in the new satellite failed to meet specifications.

24 The Soyuz T-6 crew, with the French cosmonaut Jean-Loup Chretien, is
launched to dock with Salyut 6/Soyuz T-5. They return safely on 2 July.

27 The fourth Shuttle orbital mission, with astronauts Mattingly and Hartsfield,
is launched. They land on 4 July at Edwards Air Force Base in California
with President Reagan looking on.

29 Shuttle Orbiter Challenger leaves its production plant at Palmdale in California for the journey by road to Edwards Air Force Base. It is airlifted from
the base soon after the landing of STS-4 on 4 July. Challenger will first fly
in the STS-6 mission. An on-the-pad engine firing is planned for the first half
of December.

30 General Beregovoi, commander of the Gagarin Space Training Centre, tells
foreign journalists that two women, one a pilot-engineer and the other a
flight engineer, gre training for a Salyut 7 flight.

July 1982

3 The Marecs B satellite arrives at Kourou in French Guiana for launch by
Ariane L5 on 10 September.

10 The Progress 14 resupply craft is launched to dock with Salyut 7 on 12 July.

16 The Landsat 4 remote sensing satellite is orbited by the first Delta 3920 vehicle.

30 The Salyut 7 cosmonauts make a 2 hour 33 minute EVA to retrieve
experiments from outside the space station. The Salyut 6/Cosmos 1267
vehicle reentered the atmosphere the day before.

August 1982

2 Installation of the scientific experiments on the Spacelab 1 pallet is completed
at the Kennedy Space Center. Power will be applied later this month.

19 Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman since Valentina Tereshkova in
1963 to go into space. Serving as a researcher-cosmonaut aboard Soyuz T-7,
she is accompanied by Leonid Popov and Alexander Serebrov. The crew
will spend a week aboard Salyut 7 before returning in the Soyuz T-5 craft.
Savitskaya, an experienced pilot, began training for her flight in 1980, well
after NASA had chosen female astronaut candidates.