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Soyuz 28
	The Soyuz 28 return capsule, on display at the Prague Aviation Museum, Kbely
Operator	Soviet space program
COSPAR ID	1978-023A
SATCAT no.	10694
Mission duration	7 days, 22 hours and 16 minutes
Orbits completed	125
Spacecraft properties
Spacecraft type	Soyuz 7K-T
Manufacturer	NPO Energia
Launch mass	6,800 kg (15,000 lb)
Crew
Crew size	2
Members	Aleksei Gubarev; Vladimír Remek
Callsign	Зенит (Zenit – "Zenith")
Start of mission
Launch date	2 March 1978, 15:28:10 UTC
Rocket	Soyuz-U
Launch site	Baikonur 1/5
End of mission
Landing date	10 March 1978, 13:44:10 UTC
Landing site	51°03′N 66°42′E / 51.05°N 66.7°E
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Geocentric
Regime	Low Earth
Perigee altitude	198.9 km (123.6 mi)
Apogee altitude	275.6 km (171.2 mi)
Inclination	51.65 degrees
Period	88.95 minutes
Docking with Salyut 6
Docking port	Aft
Docking date	3 March 1978, 17:09:30 UTC
Undocking date	10 March 1978, 10:23:30 UTC
Time docked	6 days, 17 hours and 14 minutes
	; Gubarev (left) and Remek (right) Soyuz programme ← Soyuz 27 Kosmos 1001 →

Soyuz 28 (Russian: Союз 28, Union 28) was a March 1978 Soviet crewed mission to the orbiting Salyut 6 space station.^[2] It was the fourth mission to the station, the third successful docking, and the second visit to the resident crew launched in Soyuz 26.

Cosmonaut Vladimír Remek from Czechoslovakia became the first person launched into space who was not a citizen of the United States or the Soviet Union. The other crew member was Aleksei Gubarev. The flight was the first mission in the Intercosmos program that gave Eastern Bloc and other communist states access to space through crewed and uncrewed launches.

Crew


Position	Cosmonaut
Commander	Aleksei Gubarev EP-2 Second and last spaceflight
Research Cosmonaut	Vladimír Remek, IK EP-2 Only spaceflight

Backup crew


Position	Cosmonaut
Commander	Nikolai Rukavishnikov
Research Cosmonaut	Oldřich Pelčák, IK

Mission parameters

Mass: 6,800 kg (15,000 lb)
Perigee: 198.9 km (123.6 mi)
Apogee: 275.6 km (171.2 mi)
Inclination: 51.65°
Period: 88.95 minutes

Mission highlights

The Soyuz 28 mission was the first Intercosmos flight, whereby military pilots from Soviet bloc nations were flown on flights of about eight days to a Soviet space station. Pilots from other nations would eventually also fly. The program was a reaction to American plans to fly Western Europeans on Space Shuttle missions.^[3]^: 182

Vladimir Remek, the first non-Soviet, non-American to travel to space, was launched aboard Soyuz 28 on 2 March 1978, after a three-day delay of unspecified cause. The Soyuz commander was Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Gubarev. The crew docked with the orbiting Salyut 6 space station, and greeted the occupants Georgi Grechko and Yuri Romanenko who had arrived on Soyuz 26 in December. Gubarev and Grechko had previously flown together on Soyuz 17 to the Salyut 4 space station in 1975.^[4]^: 179

The day after the docking, the Soyuz 26 crew celebrated their breaking of the space endurance record of 84 days, set by the Skylab 4 crew in 1974.^[4]^: 109

While the mission had a political purpose, scientific experiments were carried out, including one which monitored the growth of chlorella algae in zero gravity, another which used the on-board Splav furnace to melt glass, lead, silver, and copper chlorides, and an experiment called Oxymeter which measured oxygen in human tissue.^[3]^: 183

On 10 March, the Soyuz 28 crew prepared for their return to Earth, packing experiments and testing systems. They undocked from the station and landed 310 km (190 mi) west of Tselinograd later that day.^[3]^: 184

A joke appeared soon after the mission that Remek's hand had mysteriously turned red. He informed the doctors, the joke goes, that this was because every time he went to touch something, the Soviet crewmembers would slap his hand and yell, "Don't touch that!"^[5]

References

^ Mark Wade. "Baikonur LC1". Encyclopedia Astronautica. Retrieved 4 March 2009.
^ ^a ^b "Spaceflight mission report: Soyuz 28". SPACEFACTS.de. Retrieved 18 September 2024.
^ ^a ^b ^c Dennis Newkirk (1990). Almanac of Soviet Manned Space Flight. Houston, Texas, USA: Gulf Publishing Company. ISBN 0-87201-848-2.
^ ^a ^b Phillip Clark (1988). The Soviet Manned Space Program. New York, USA: Orion Books. ISBN 0-517-56954-X.
^ Douglas A. Vakoch (6 July 2011). Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective. NASA. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-16-088358-3. Retrieved 5 August 2012.