Almaz-205

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PICTURE GALLERY

The hull of the station featured a front hatch which was blocked from the outside by a set of tanks, apparently added late in the development to extend the capabilities of the station's attitude control system. Copyright © 2011 Anatoly Zak

Above: The Almaz 1-11F71B-0100-0 (Manufacturing number 0205-02) space station as of April 2011.

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Almaz-205

The vehicle delivered by Excalibur-Almaz to the Island of Man, UK, in January 2011 was identified in export documentation by its manufacturer, NPO Machinostroenia, as 1-11F71B-0100-0. Its manufacturing ("zavodskoi") number was shown as 0205-02. With all of the station's payloads and some subsystems absent, the spacecraft's net mass was shown to be 6,720 kilograms. Inside, temporary wooden panels were replacing real flooring.

At the time of its arrival in the United Kingdom, the spacecraft still featured a crew transfer compartment at the "tail" of the station, however the docking hardware was absent. The hull of the station also had a front hatch, which was blocked from the outside by a set of tanks, apparently added late in the development to extend the capabilities of the station's attitude control system. This was all possible evidence of late efforts in the Almaz program to rebuild the spacecraft from a man-tended configuration into a fully automated vehicle.

Next chapter: Almaz-206

Writing and photography by Anatoly Zak; Last update: May 20, 2011

Page editor: Alain Chabot; Last edit: May 20, 2011