Soyuz 9

Key facts

Mission & specifications

Mission

Soyuz 9 flew the longest space mission the world had yet seen — and paid a price that reshaped spaceflight medicine. Andriyan Nikolayev, back in orbit eight years after Vostok 3, and flight engineer Vitaly Sevastyanov launched on 1 June 1970 and stayed up for nearly eighteen days, taking the endurance record Gemini 7 had held for four and a half years. For most of the flight the two worked through Earth-survey and navigation experiments and even played a game of chess against ground control. But their cramped cabin left no room to exercise, and when they landed on 19 June the crew were so weakened by weightlessness that they could barely stand — heavy-limbed and unsteady, carried from the capsule, taking days to readjust to gravity. It was the sharpest warning yet of what long stays in space do to the body, and every station that followed — Salyut, Skylab, Mir, the ISS — built in the daily exercise the flight had proved essential. It remains the longest spaceflight ever made by a craft flying alone, without a station to live aboard.

1. 1970Soyuz 9 launchesLaunch

   Andriyan Nikolayev and Vitaly Sevastyanov begin what will become an eighteen-day endurance flight.

2. 1970Past Gemini 7's recordMilestone

   The crew pass the fourteen-day mark, taking the space endurance record Gemini 7 had held since 1965.

3. 1970A hard return to gravityMission end

   After nearly 18 days the crew land so weakened by weightlessness they must be carried out — reshaping how every later long mission trains.

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