Scientists were unsure of how firing the cannon would affect the station itself, especially with no gravity, so the test was to happen just hours before it was deorbited and long after the two man crew had returned to the planet. On January 24, 1975 the station's jet thrusters roared to life while the cannon was fired simultaneously. There are differing accounts of what happened but the cannon fired between 1 to 3 bursts with around 20 shells in all, the shells eventually burning up in the atmosphere. Cosmonauts have said that a test satellite was hit and destroyed by the cannon, though this has never been confirmed by the Russian government and many of the documents are still classified. However the next Almaz station that was to be launched was equipped with a pair of interceptor missiles rather than the cannon, whether this was just for test purposes or due to poor performance of the cannon is unknown. It is also unknown how effective the rockets were as the upgraded Almaz station was grounded before its scheduled launch in 1978, never making it to space.

Personal Thoughts

This has interested me ever since I learned about it and I do wish there was more information available. I really like space exploration and learning about the crafts and technology used, even though I don’t always understand everything about it. The Soviet space program is particularly interesting because they did do a lot of crazy things and there is still to this day a lot of information that is classified. I kind of wondered why they didn’t put the cannon on a swivel so they wouldn’t have to move the whole station but I think it’s because it wasn’t manned when they fired it and it was done remotely. There is probably another reason related to physics in space.

Sources

Cover photo is Public Domain

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a18187/here-is-the-soviet-unions-secret-space-cannon/

http://www.astronautix.com/a/almaz.html

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/histind/Almprog/almprog.htm

https://www.britannica.com/technology/Salyu﻿