The Soviet Union launches an unmanned module, Kosmos 1443, on a trajectory that will bring it to the Salyut 7 space station for an automated docking. Once connected to Salyut 7, Kosmos 1443 provides extra habitable space for experiments and storage. A hardware holdover from the abandoned Almaz military space station program of the early 1970s, Kosmos remains docked to Salyut 7 through August 1983, at which time it is undocked and jettisoned, falling out of orbit and burning up in Earth’s atmosphere in September.
