Soyuz 7K-ST No. 16L (sometimes known as
Soyuz T-10a or
T-10-1) was an unsuccessful Soyuz mission intended to visit the
Salyut 7 space station, which was occupied by the
Soyuz T-9 crew.
It was set to launch atop a Soyuz-U rocket on September 26, 1983. However, prior to launch, the rocket caught fire on its launch pad at Site 1/5, Baikonur Cosmodrome. The launch escape system of the Soyuz spacecraft fired two seconds before the launch vehicle exploded, saving the crew of commander Vladimir G. Titov and flight engineer Gennadi Strekalov. It is so far the only case in which a launch escape system has been fired with a crew aboard.
The mission was a visiting expedition to Salyut 7. The crew was scheduled to return in Soyuz T-9, leaving Soyuz T-10 for the crew on the space station to return in later. The failure briefly led to speculation in the West that the crew of Soyuz T-9 may be stranded on the space station, but this was never the case. That crew would return to Earth as normal on November 23, 1983, aboard Soyuz T-9.
Glynn S. Lunney (November 27, 1936 – March 19, 2021) was an American
NASA engineer. An employee of NASA since its foundation in 1958, Lunney was a
flight director during the
Gemini and
Apollo programs, and was on duty during historic events such as the
Apollo 11 lunar ascent and the pivotal hours of the
Apollo 13 crisis. At the end of the Apollo program, he became manager of the
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first collaboration in spaceflight between the United States and the
Soviet Union. Later, he served as manager of the
Space Shuttle program before leaving NASA in 1985 and later becoming a Vice President of the
United Space Alliance.
Lunney was a key figure in America's manned space program from Project Mercury through the coming of the Space Shuttle. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the National Space Trophy, which he was given by the Rotary Club in 2005. Chris Kraft, NASA's first flight director, described Lunney as "a true hero of the space age", saying that he was "one of the outstanding contributors to the exploration of space of the last four decades".