Surging Ahead

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

Dominating one wall of the control room was an enormous display screen showing a map of the world. Superimposed on the map, a line traced the orbit of the Mir space station, with rings along it representing ground stations. Mir's position was marked by a blue-green light, which was moving slowly across the circle centered on Moscow. The flyby would take only eight minutes, after which the window of communication would close. The audio feed came through with startling clarity, as if Cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko were standing in the next room. "The work here is very interesting," he said in response to a question that had been posed in writing by TIME Correspondent Dick Thompson. "It brings us a lot of satisfaction."

How does Mir compare with earlier Soviet space stations? "There is much more space," said Romanenko. "There is even room that can be used for living room. Atmospheric conditions are better, and all the instruments provide for good fresh air. It's much better than Salyut." Before another question could be asked, the light left the Moscow circle; the window had closed. Though all too brief, it was an extraordinary, exclusive exchange between an American journalist and an orbiting Soviet cosmonaut.

Just a few years ago that encounter in the Soviet Flight Control Center at Kaliningrad, a suburb 15 miles northeast of Moscow, would have been unthinkable. In the closed world of the Soviet space program, the most impressive launches were rarely announced in advance for fear of failure. Even then, the barest details were released afterward -- and only if the mission went just as planned. These days that characteristic secrecy seems to have evaporated, replaced with a confidence bolstered by the dawning international recognition that Soviet achievements in space are fast outstripping those of the U.S.

The new dynamism is drawn from a spirit of glasnost, or openness, that preceded the revolution Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev is striving to bring to Soviet society. Moscow's venerable Institute of Space Research (known as IKI, its Russian acronym) now bustles with the comings and goings of an increasingly youthful, independent-minded cadre of Soviet space specialists. And along with them are growing numbers of foreign colleagues, many of whom have been invited to add their experiments to Soviet space missions. Visiting scientists need only a pass to wander the halls freely.

Such self-assurance on the part of the Soviet space establishment will be in ample evidence this week as IKI and its charismatic director, Roald Sagdeyev, sponsor a three-day extravaganza of seminars and speeches celebrating the 30th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957. Called Space Future Forum, it will focus on the topic of international cooperation in space. Some 500 scientific luminaries from around the world plan to attend.

The Soviet conference is evidence that in their space program, openness is not just political fashion. Says Genevieve Debouzy, of the French space agency: "The seminars that ten years ago would have been given at the Goddard Space Flight Center are now given in Moscow." To the surprise of Americans, the Soviets' well-deserved reputation for a plodding, low-tech, assembly-line approach to space exploration has paid off. Says James Beggs, former NASA administrator: "There's been a habit in this country of thinking of the Soviets as stupid and that they steal all their technology. That's just not so."

Indeed, space experts in the U.S. and Europe are now conceding publicly what they would have found laughable a decade ago: although the Soviets lag far behind in electronic gadgetry, they have surged past the U.S. in almost all areas of space exploration. If unchallenged, Moscow is likely to become the world's dominant power in space by the 21st century. Says Heinz Hermann Koelle, a West German space-technology professor and former director of future projects at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center: "American pre-eminence in space simply no longer exists." Warns James Oberg, an expert on the Soviet space program: "If the Soviets can aggressively exploit this operational advantage, they can make us eat space dust for a long time to come."

In sheer numbers of launches per year, the Soviets inched past the U.S. in 1967, 66 to 58, and have stayed in front since. In 1982 they sent up 101 space shots, in contrast to 18 by the U.S. More impressive, Soviet cosmonauts have logged some 14 man-years in space, against less than five for U.S. astronauts. The knowledge of Soviet doctors and researchers about the medical and psychological consequences of long-term space habitation far outstrips that of their American counterparts. And with the twin Vega space probes, which photographed Halley's comet in 1986, Soviet scientists consolidated their reputation for gathering impressive scientific data from space.

The Soviets' launch capability took a quantum leap earlier this year when they successfully fired off Energia, a booster as powerful as the mighty Saturn 5, which the U.S. developed for the Apollo program and then scrapped in favor of the shuttle. With Energia, the Soviets can loft 100-ton payloads, vs. a maximum for the U.S. shuttle of 30 tons. That is enough to carry their shuttle, which is under development, or to orbit parts for a space station far larger than Mir, which could be a platform for a manned mission to Mars. Says Dale Myers, deputy administrator at NASA: "Energia is a pretty impressive machine. I would sure like to have it."

For all these accomplishments, Soviet microelectronics and computers are ten years behind those of the U.S. Military satellites sometimes break down in a matter of weeks. Photoreconnaissance satellites literally drop their film to earth for processing. The ultraconservative Soviet military is just now beginning to experiment with the techniques of electronic imaging developed by U.S. scientists years ago. Still, admits Geoffrey Briggs, NASA's director of solar-system exploration, "it's not clear that you need state of the art to be effective."

The Soviet drive into space is taking place while American space efforts are all but moribund. The U.S. space program has been virtually closed down since the space shuttle Challenger exploded in midair 73 seconds after lift-off in January 1986, killing all seven astronauts aboard, including Teacher Christa McAuliffe. The tragedy was more than a setback for NASA. It exposed the agency as an unwieldy, indecisive bureaucracy unsure of its direction and increasingly beset by the demands of the military and the Reagan White House (see following story).

NASA could handle awesomely complex missions like the Apollo landing on the moon in 1969 as long as it had plenty of money and control. But it has never established a long-range vision of the U.S. role in space. After its budget was cut in the early 1970s, the agency promised far more than it could finally deliver with the shuttle program. Even if launches resume on schedule, the orbiter Discovery will not fly until June 1988.

Meanwhile the Soviets are moving ahead. Next July the ambitious twin Phobos probes should be on their way to explore Mars and its moons. It is a mission worthy of Jules Verne. Harold Masursky, an astrogeologist who worked on the U.S. Viking missions to Mars, says the concept is "so damn complicated, it's just hair-raising." The Soviets plan to follow up on Phobos in 1992 by lofting another spacecraft, which will analyze Martian soil. Later in the decade, they want to use an unmanned probe to bring pieces of the planet back to earth, and have boldly suggested that the mission be jointly undertaken with the U.S.

But complex scientific missions are only part of the Soviets' push to dominate space. They are aggressively marketing their workhorse Proton boosters as a low-cost alternative to the European Space Agency's Ariane, China's Long March and, eventually, private U.S. rockets for launching commercial satellites. The Soviets are offering to sell high-resolution satellite photos of earth that could be used for mapping and assessment of agricultural and mineral resources. They plan to continue occupying Mir, which has been in orbit since February 1986. The space station has already been outfitted with an astronomical observatory module named Kvant. Additional modules are planned for materials processing, earth observation and biomedical research.

The Soviet space program had several notable early successes, including Sputnik 1, the first pictures from the dark side of the moon in 1959 and the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin in 1961. But its planetary-science program did not really take off until shortly after the appointment in 1973 of a 40- year-old scientist named Roald Z. Sagdeyev as head of IKI. From the outset, Sagdeyev started to shake things up. He took physicists out of their labs and put them on production lines to watch their experiments being built. Says Georgi Managadze, chief of IKI's active space experiments lab: "Sagdeyev follows every stage of manufacturing and testing."

The new director took some unprecedented and risky steps. He brought talented Jewish scientists into the institute. He began building a corps of young scientists and selecting projects based on their scientific value rather than the political standing of scientists. He fought for access to computers. Most important, and politically the riskiest, he introduced a potent measure of democracy into the Soviet program. "Before Sagdeyev," says Louis Friedman, executive director of the U.S. Planetary Society, "the Soviet space program was closed. Now they talk about their plans. They even argue in public. He has materially changed the way they do major projects." Declares Thomas Donahue, chairman of the National Academy of Sciences' space-science board: "He introduced glasnost into the space-science program years before Gorbachev."

Sagdeyev's era might have been short-lived except for one thing: it produced results. Among the first breakthroughs were Venera 9 and 10, projects started by Sagdeyev's predecessor, Georgi Petrov. In 1975 the two probes transmitted the first photographs of Venus' hellish surface. Imagers on the next two probes failed, but Nos. 13 and 14 sent back color photos plus a wealth of information on atmospheric, surface and subsurface chemistry. Then in 1983 came a pair of missions that stunned Western space scientists. Venera 15 and 16, in Venus' orbit, transmitted high-resolution radar maps of the planet's surface. The maps, says former NASA Administrator Beggs, "indicated a level of radar technology that we had not given the Soviets credit for." Says Masursky: "They did first-class work."

Sagdeyev was already embarked on another project, one that could have ended his career. Called Vega, the mission was designed to approach and study Halley's comet. Sagdeyev chose to build Vega around the proven, off-the-shelf technology of the Venera probes. But he wanted the scientific instruments to be custom designed, even though the expertise was not available within the U.S.S.R. So he recruited scientists from nine countries, including the U.S., to join the project. That was unheard-of in security-conscious Soviet space circles. Recalls Sagdeyev: "Sometimes my opponents, in order to take over, were almost ready to say that I was too much for foreign cooperation. But if you have a belief that what you are doing is right, you can survive difficult times."

The gamble paid off spectacularly. On March 4, 1986, having swung by Venus to drop off scientific probes, Vega 1 trained its camera on the comet, then less than 9 million miles away, and relayed high-quality pictures to earth. Two days later, it came within 5,500 miles of the comet's heart. Although pelted by dust, Vega 1 revealed for the first time the dimensions and dynamics of the ten-mile-long nucleus.

The Vega mission put the world on notice that the Soviet Union would not take a backseat to anyone in space science. Admits NASA's Briggs: "They closed a big gap." But Sagdeyev has made it clear that catching up was only the beginning. He has now directed his considerable intellect, political capital and diplomatic charm to another high-risk international mission. If all goes according to plan, the Phobos probes will take off next summer for Mars. When they reach the Red Planet some 200 days and 118 million miles later, they will orbit for a time, taking data on solar physics. The first Phobos will match orbits with the moon for which it is named, a chunk of rock about 14 miles across believed by many astronomers to be an asteroid captured by Mars' gravity. The other will be a backup.

Phobos will glide between 98 and 260 ft. above the moon's surface -- "something similar to a cruise missile," quips Sagdeyev -- and drop an instrument-bearing minilander to record data on the moon's soil. One experiment involves a laser that will emit short bursts of energy, each vaporizing a square millimeter of surface into a cloud that can be analyzed by the probe's spectrometer. "You can pick up such exploded material from many different places," says Sagdeyev. "In the end you have a chemical map of the surface of Phobos -- if you are lucky."

But there is more than luck involved, as Western experts make clear. "The Phobos mission," says Cornell Planetary Scientist Carl Sagan, "is not just world class. It is novel, diverse and appropriate. The whole idea is very clever." Notes Gerhard Neukum, of the German Aerospace Research Establishment: "The Mars mission is fantastic. It carries a huge set of instruments. They did it with Venus. Now they have focused on Mars, and it is to be expected that they will be equally successful." In fact, each of the probes will carry 25 instruments -- an enormous number, considering that the U.S.'s complex, much delayed Galileo probe to Jupiter has only 16.

Sagdeyev has even higher expectations for the Mars Sample Return mission, now being planned for the late 1990s. The idea is for the spacecraft to make a soft landing on the planet and send a rover to gather soil samples on a yearlong trek over the surface. Then about 2 lbs. of material would be returned to earth for detailed analysis. In Sagdeyev's plan, the U.S. would supply the rover, plus advanced electronics to guide it from an orbiting mother ship.

Sagdeyev's enthusiasm for robot probes, however, brings with it an inevitable tension: in the U.S.S.R., just as in the U.S., the unmanned and manned programs compete for budget dollars, and so far the manned missions have been the big winners. But, says Sagdeyev, "99% of what man can do in space can be done by robots." The statement irritates his comrades at Soviet mission control. "This crew has done 100 repair jobs," scoffs Victor Blagov, the deputy flight director, arguing that humans are needed to deal with unanticipated situations. Snaps Stepan Bogodyazh of Glavkosmos, the Soviet equivalent of NASA: "You need people there to test the instruments. The cosmonaut is a researcher, and this is a laboratory."

As with their unmanned missions, the Soviets have made a virtue of slow, steady progress in the manned program. While the U.S. jumped quickly from orbital flights to moon missions to the now defunct Skylab to the shuttle, cosmonauts have steadily plied earth orbits for nearly three decades. The Soviets perfected their launch techniques by using substantially the same rocket that sent Gagarin into orbit in 1961. While they lost the race to the moon for want of a large booster, they remedied the situation last May, when the 170 million-hp Energia rocket blasted off its pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, near Tyuratam in Soviet Central Asia.

The new rocket will make possible the deployment of larger, more sophisticated Soviet space stations. Says Bogodyazh: "There will be a Mir 2." Explains Alexander Dunayev, head of Glavkosmos: "Space stations weigh up to several dozen tons. What's needed are stations that weigh several hundred tons. We should soon learn to build big structures out there, not tens of meters but kilometers across, multifunctional platforms. Cosmonauts may well live there permanently. And from these structures, there may be flights to other planets." If so, then first on the agenda, undoubtedly, would be Mars.

The lure is strong. Mars is the only other known planet that may be habitable -- and thus the only realistic location for a space colony. That makes it a logical target for the Soviets, who are committed to establishing a permanent presence in space for both scientific and military reasons. Besides, the national prestige resulting from a visit to Mars would be immense.

The greatest problem: the physiological stress of a mission that could take up to three years. The Soviets learned early that humans are not built for a low-gravity environment. On a long-duration flight in 1970, which lasted 18 days, the cosmonauts did no physical conditioning. After they landed, it was almost three weeks before they could walk. Now it is well established that space travelers begin to lose muscle tone almost immediately and that calcium starts leaching from bones in low-gravity environments. Today, thanks to intensive research, Soviet space explorers returning to earth from 200-day- plus missions can walk unaided in three days and recover completely within three weeks.

The prescription: constant physical therapy. Each day, Mir cosmonauts put in an hour on an exercise bicycle and another on a treadmill. For 16 hours a day, they are required to wear a suit crisscrossed with a web of elastic cords so that any movement in any direction forces the cosmonauts to strain against the counterpressure. It is no pleasure. "They do it because their health depends on it," says Deputy Flight Director Blagov. "They cannot miss a single day. Without the work load, there may be calcium loss and decrease in leg muscles. The body takes away what it doesn't use." Sagdeyev is convinced that the health dangers of a Mars mission would be manageable. "The first year is O.K.," he says, "so two or three years are probably also O.K."

Psychological problems too are likely on a long flight. To keep motivation sharp and productivity high, the Soviets pay plenty of attention to the space station's livability. The interior of Mir, for example, has been painted in two colors to provide the crew with a sense of floor and ceiling. On Mir, cosmonauts get two days off each week and have special radio hookups so they can talk with their families and with virtually any sports figure, scientist or celebrity they choose.

The Soviets have shared their knowledge about long-term spaceflight, mostly through informal contacts rather than formal publication. Says one NASA specialist: "We have a book summarizing these lessons. We've got their diets. We try to make our people very aware of what the Soviets have done, because our own experience is all short duration and our data base is very old."

Nonetheless, says Nicholas Johnson, author of the book Soviet Year in Space, "the Soviets still have much to learn before they can reasonably responsibly put together a Mars mission." They need, for example, a reliable propulsion system for their interplanetary space capsule; at least two of the later Salyut systems had propulsion failures. The Soviets are weak, Johnson says, in communications technology. "They know they do not have the best technology," he observes. But they are working on it.

Similar shortcomings plague the glasnost-proof, supersecret Soviet military space program. At any one time, say U.S. intelligence analysts, the U.S.S.R. is operating some 150 satellites, and perhaps as many as 120 are believed to be performing military missions. For hours each day, say intelligence analysts, Soviet Cosmos military satellites drift over the U.S., photographing missile silos and naval deployments. Other Soviet spacecraft lurk with sensitive electronic ears that can pick up telephone conversations in Washington, while Meteor weather satellites monitor conditions over key U.S. targets. Soviet infrared satellites watch for the telltale heat signaling a launch of U.S. ICBMs. At the military launch site in Plesetsk, 500 miles northeast of Moscow, crews stand ready to launch additional intelligence satellites at a moment's notice.

"They have a very active military space program in numerical terms," says the Brookings Institution's Paul Stares, author of the recently published book Space and National Security. "But simple numerical comparisons of space activity can be misleading. In every possible way, our satellites are superior to theirs." Since 1972, for example, the Soviets have been struggling to establish a continuous early-warning launch-detection satellite system. Since these satellites generally have short life-spans, says a Washington analyst, "the Soviets are forever launching those early-warning systems." As a result, the Soviet brass are less prone than their American counterparts to depend heavily on them. Says Johnson: "The military environment will not collapse without those satellites. They are there simply to enhance and increase the efficiency of Soviet ground-based systems."

Some Western experts, notably U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, charge that the Soviets have a working satellite-killer system in place. Administration officials suspect that military research is under way aboard Mir. Indeed, a classified intelligence report this summer described a Star Wars-like test in which a laser on Mir located and tracked a Soviet dummy ICBM. U.S. observers like Soviet Space Expert Oberg find such assertions "highly implausible." Still, he does not believe for a moment "that Mir is a completely nonmilitary station." Says Oberg: "The microchips they make in space don't go into video arcades in Moscow. They go into missile guidance." He points out that the Soviets "have been pursuing a space- weapons program for 20 years and lying about it. We have to adjust to the fact that they do pretty nasty things in space weapons."

Despite mutual and growing distrust between Washington and Moscow on the military uses of space -- a contrast to increasing cooperation in limiting nuclear weapons -- Sagdeyev's plea for U.S. cooperation on the Mars Sample Return mission seems to be serious and genuine. Argues Sagdeyev: "If we start progress in this area, it could create a much better political climate."

Should the U.S. consider cooperative missions like the Mars project a legitimate pathway back into space? Or should it view Sagdeyev's emphasis on international cooperation as an attempt by the Soviets to gain access to Western technology? Sagdeyev has repeatedly assured U.S. scientists that his only interest is in building the most advanced space probes. The experience of U.S. and European scientists with Soviet space programs has been mixed. Says University of Chicago Physicist John Simpson, who had a comet-dust analyzer on Vega: "I was allowed into their inner labs to supervise the installation of the experiment directly on board their spacecraft. That had never been done before." Simpson says the Pentagon was not pleased, but notes, "There was nothing in those instruments that can benefit the Soviets militarily." To allay the fears of Western governments, the Soviets have promised that foreign satellites will be left sealed until launch, thus ensuring that no secrets of advanced technology will be stolen.

Others express frustration with Soviet managerial clumsiness. Wolfgang Pietsch of West Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, whose team has an X-ray detector in the Kvant module, first learned that the experiment had finally been launched when it was announced on East German radio. Says Andrea Caruso, head of Europe's Eutelsat satellite cartel: "From a business point of view, they still have a lot to learn. I keep corresponding with them, and they keep sending me back telexes in Russian. It's a disaster."

For the U.S. to embrace fully Sagdeyev's concept of wide-ranging cooperation with the Soviets would mean a radical rethinking of the U.S. space program. Indeed, the very concept of a space race between the superpowers -- at least in the nonmilitary sectors -- would become outmoded. Does it really matter who is ahead in space? "Yes," answers NASA's Myers unequivocally. "It has always been the goal of the United States to be the leader in space."

That, and the fact that sending sophisticated technology into the U.S.S.R. would be risky, suggests that the U.S. is unlikely to take up Sagdeyev's offer. U.S.-Soviet cooperation and the rising fortunes of the Soviet space program have posed troubling questions for Washington that cannot be ignored. Can the U.S. forge a consistent, long-range policy for space? What kind of resources will it take for America to recapture its position as the leading space power? Considering the Soviet lead, is it possible to catch up? It is up to the Reagan Administration, which is currently re-evaluating the future of the crippled U.S. space program, to supply the answers.

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CREDIT: TIME Chart by Joe Lertola

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DESCRIPTION: Soviet and U.S. space programs from 1957 to present and near future.

With reporting by Dick Thompson/Kaliningrad, with other bureaus