The early Salyut stations, One to Five, were based on two different design criteria. One for civilian scientific purposes and the other to satisfy military objectives.
Salyut Two, Three and Five were the highly secretive military stations called Almaz-OPS (Orbital Piloted Station). The civilian Salyut program was used to cover these launches. These stations were similar, consisting of an airlock chamber, a large-diameter work compartment, and a small-diameter living compartment. They had two solar arrays, one docking port, and two main engines for orbital manoeuvring.
Salyut One and Four were civilian "Durable Orbital Stations" (DOS). These stations were designed to carry out long-term research into living in space and a variety of astronomical, biological and Earth-resources experiments. Both stations were modified Almaz stations with five components: a transfer compartment, a main compartment, two auxiliary compartments, and the Orion 1 Space Observatory.
Salyut Four used the basic design of Salyut One, but had three large solar panels rather than four small panels and was equipped with the Delta autonomous navigation system.
The later Salyut stations, Six and Seven, were designed for continuous occupancy with long-duration expeditions. Although they resembled the previous Salyut stations in overall design, several revolutionary changes were made to the stations to facilitate continuous occupation.
They featured a longer design life and a second docking port at the aft of the stations. Crew exchanges and station "handovers" were then possible by docking two crewed Soyuz spacecraft at the same time.
Also the un-crewed Progress cargo craft could be docked to the station at the same time as the crew's Soyuz spacecraft. Progress delivered air, water, food, clothing, bedding, mail, propellants and other supplies.
Below are drawings showing the various configurations of the Salyut stations and the Mir Core Module.
Click on a drawing to go to a page with more details.
The drawings are indicative only and not to scale.
