After Apollo 11 and four catastrophic N1 rocket failures, the Soviet Union abandoned the Moon and pivoted to a new finish line: the first space station. Salyut 1, internally DOS-1, was adapted from the classified Almaz military platform and shipped to Baikonur in about a year. This episode explores the 18,000 kilogram, 20 meter cylinder with its apple green and light yellow walls, a deliberate medical countermeasure to give disoriented cosmonauts a visual up and down when their inner ear otoliths stopped working in weightlessness.

We break down the SSVP probe and drogue docking system that still connects vehicles to the Russian segment of the ISS, the Orion 1 ultraviolet observatory designed by Grigor Gurzadyan, and the classified payloads that used astrophysics to characterize rocket exhaust plumes. Soyuz 10 achieved only a soft dock and h ...