Landing Soyuz Lifeboats in Australia (1992)

After the 1986 Challenger disaster, NASA hatched plans for a Space Station Freedom lifeboat. In 1992, the U.S. and Russia examined whether Russia's Soyuz spacecraft could serve as stop-gap until the NASA lifeboat could be completed. That same year, NASA and Russian engineers traveled to Australia. Mission: find a place for the Soyuz lifeboat to land.

Conceptual NASA space station lifeboat, c.1992. Image: NASA.
Kosmos 133, the first in the long line of Soyuz (“Union”) spacecraft, lifted off unmanned from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Central Asia on November 28, 1966. Its mission: to dock automatically with Kosmos 134, another unmanned Soyuz that was scheduled to be launched the following day.
The new spacecraft included three modules. These were, from aft to fore, the cylindrical service module containing the spacecraft’s main rocket engine; the cramped descent module, designed for land landing, which included the main control panel, heat shield, main and backup parachutes, soft-landing rockets, and three cosmonaut launch and landing couches; and, linked to the descent module by a hatchway, the ovoid orbital module, which contained extra living space and included a docking unit. The three modules had a combined mass of about 7000 kilograms.
During reentry, the orbital and service ...