Day: December 10, 1977

A two-man crew – cosmonauts Yuri Romanenko and Georgi Grechko – is launched aboard Soyuz 26 by the Soviet Union. The Soyuz capsule docks with the recently-launched Salyut 6 space station, and the crew takes up residence for over three months, setting a new space endurance record at 96 days. The Soyuz 27 crew visits in January and swaps vehicles with the station occupants, meaning that Romanenko and Grechko technically return to Earth aboard Soyuz 27 in March 1978. Ten days into the mission, the first Soviet spacewalk since 1969 is undertaken to examine the forward docking hatch of Salyut 6, with which the previous mission failed to connect. This spacewalk was the first outing of the Soviet-made Orlan spacesuit, a design still in use on the International Space Station in the 21st century.