Soviet-Bulgarian Space Team Fails in Mission

A Soviet-Bulgarian space team landed safely in Soviet Central Asia after failing to link up with an orbiting space laboratory, Moscow radio reported yesterday.

The broadcast said the Soyuz 33 space capsule, which did not dock with the orbiting Salyut 6 space laboratory on Wednesday, parachuted to a soft landing last night.

Tass News Agency said a malfunction in the "approach correction power unit" of the space capsule caused the last minute cancellation of the docking with the space station. Two Soviets, Vladimir Lyakhov and Valerie Ryumin, have been orbiting in Salyut 6 for six and one-half weeks.

Western aerospace engineers said yesterday that Soyuz 33 was unable to make the difficult approach maneuver and that similar problems in the past resulted in a Soyuz booster malfunction.

The observers added that yesterday's failure, and the disastrous mission of Soyuz 25 in October 1977, shows a weakness in the Soviet ability to form an orbiting "sausage" of several vehicles.

They said such an approach involves a more difficult docking procedure than the technique developed for the U.S. space shuttle.

Yesterday's was the first disappointment in the Intercosmos space program, in which the Soviet Union trains Eastern Bloc cosmonauts. It dampened in the Soviet Union yesterday's celebrations of the eighteenth anniversary of the first manned space flight--that of a Russian.

Czechoslovakians, Poles and East Germans have successfully participated in the Intercosmos program. Romanians, Cubans and Mongolians are reported to be in training for future missions.

Troubles have plagued the Soyuz-Salyut program of manned space laboratories since its inauguration. The first Soyuz spacecraft, developed in 1967 to carry cosmonauts to and from orbiting space stations, crashed on its return, killing its cosmonaut.

The first, attempt to dock with a space station was aborted in 1971 without any explanation. The next manned mission, Soyuz 11, put three men aboard the space station Salyut 1. But the cosmonauts were killed on their return to earth when their cabin lost its pressurization.