Fourth expedition to
Salyut 7. Its mission was heavily impacted by the
Soyuz T-8 docking failure and the
Soyuz T-10a Soyuz booster failures which bracketed it. Almost immediately after docking at Salyut 7's aft port, the crew entered
Kosmos 1443 and commenced transferring the 3.5 tons of cargo lining its walls to Salyut 7. On 27 July 1983, a small object struck a Salyut 7 viewport. It blasted out a 4-mm crater, but did not penetrate the outer of the window's two panes. The Soviets believed it was a member of the
Delta Aquariid meteor shower, though it may have been a small piece of
orbital debris. The crew loaded Cosmos 1443's
VA capsule with 350 kg of experiment results and hardware no longer in use. It could have held 500 kg, had they had that much to put in. Cosmos 1443 then undocked, in spite of Western predictions that the
FGB component would remain attached to Salyut 7 as a space station module. The VA capsule soft-landed on 23 August 1983, and the FGB component continued in orbit until it was deorbited over the Pacific Ocean on 19 September 1983. The crew also filmed scenes for the movie
Return from Orbit. == See also ==