In orbit the station suffered technical failures though it benefited from the improved payload capacity of the visiting Progress and Soyuz craft and the experience of its crews who improvised many solutions (such as a fuel line rupture in September 1983 requiring EVAs by the Soyuz T-10 crew to repair).

It was aloft for eight years and ten months (a record not broken until Mir), during which time it was visited by 10 crews constituting six main expeditions and four secondary flights (including French and Indian cosmonauts).

The ceiling on the Salyut 7 was white; the left wall was apple green and the right one beige,[4][5] a signature design by interior design architect, Galina Balashova, who carried on the concept through Soyuz to Mir and Buran, in an effort to replace 'survive' with 'comfort', working with seasoned cosmonauts to make living conditions better and 'closer to home'[6][7] Externally, in a departure from previous first generation stations, the large diameter operations section which housed the large scientific apparatus, was colored in a distinctive brown-red and white stripe pattern.

This was performed mainly to deprive the US Space Shuttle of becoming the first manned spacecraft to launch a satellite.

The station suffered from two major problems, the first of which required extensive repair work to be performed on a number of EVAs.

The damage was eventually repaired by Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov, who needed four EVAs to fix two leaks.

At this time the station was uninhabited, after the departure of Leonid Kizim, Vladimir Solovyov and Oleg Atkov, and before the next crew arrived.

The work was performed by Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savinykh on the Soyuz T-13 mission during June 1985, in what was in the words of author David S. F. Portree "one of the most impressive feats of in-space repairs in history".

[10] Dzhanibekov piloted his ship to intercept the forward port of Salyut 7 and matched the station's rotation.

[9] Within a week sufficient systems were brought back online to allow uncrewed Progress cargo ships to dock with the station.

Between 19 and 22 August 1986, engines on Kosmos 1686 boosted Salyut 7 to a record-high mean orbital altitude of 475 km to forestall reentry until 1994.

[11] However, unexpectedly high solar activity in the late 1980s and early 1990s increased atmospheric drag on the station and sped its orbital decay.

It finally underwent an uncontrolled reentry on 7 February 1991 over the town of Capitán Bermúdez in Argentina after it overshot its intended entry point, which would have placed its debris in uninhabited portions of the southern Pacific Ocean.

Then, ground control would command the station itself to rotate 180 degrees, and the Soyuz would close and re-dock at the forward port.

[1] Specifications of the baseline 1982 Salyut 7 module, from Mir Hardware Heritage (1995, NASA RP1357):[1] (Launched crews.

Half the sky), by Bartek Biedrzycki (first published 2018), collected in Zimne światło gwiazd in 2020.