Launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome; landing
200 km southwest of Kustanay / 25 km southeast of Zhitikara.
Docking
with
Soyuz 4, which had the active
part. The two spacecrafts were electrical and mechanically connected, but there
was no direct way from one spaceship to the other. It was the first docking of
manned spacecrafts. Soyuz 5 cosmonauts
Khrunov and
Yeliseyev entered the
Soyuz 4 in a spacewalk on 16.01.1969 (0h 37m). After
pressurisation of the
Soyuz 4 capsule
they were greeted by cosmonaut
Shatalov in the
Soyuz
4 capsule.
Soyuz 4 and 5 separated
after 4 hours and 35 minutes docked together. All three cosmonauts landed with
the
Soyuz 4 spacecraft. Scientific
(medical and biological) and technical experiments were also performed, but all
in all it were tests of lunar landing techniques.
Volynov remained on Soyuz 5. During the re-entry the service
module failed to separate after retrofire resulting in nose-first re-entry,
which would have meant a sure death of the cosmonaut. So to say in the last
moment the bolts connecting the service module to the reentry capsule finally
burned through and the capsule turned around, heat shield forward, just before
the forward hatch melted. All capsule propellant was exhausted and the
cosmonaut made a 9-g uncontrolled reentry, landing hundreds of kilometres
short. It was one of the hardest landings in space history and
Volynov broke his jaw and lost several teeth.
