[3] Soyuz 32 docked with Salyut 6 the next day, and Lyakhov and Ryumin, the third long-duration crew at the station, commenced de-mothballing the facility which had been vacant since November.
When the hatch to the station was opened, the cosmonauts smelled burnt steel, a scent Ryumin called the odor of space.
[3] By the second week, they exercised 2.5 hours a day, averaged 3,100 calories of daily food intake with 2.5 litres of water.
Supplies delivered included parts for station repair, an extra storage battery, a television monitor, a new Kristall furnace to replace the old one which had broken, a gamma ray telescope and food.
Bulgarian cosmonaut Georgi Ivanov joined commander Nikolai Rukavishnikov as the craft proceeded normally towards the space station.
A second firing attempt was made, but the engine shut down again, and Ryumin, observing from the station, reported an abnormal lateral glow from behind the Soyuz during the burn.
[3] In the end, the backup engine did fire, though for 25 seconds too long, resulting in an unusually steep trajectory and loads of 10 Gs to be endured by the crew.
[3] The failure of a prestigious international mission was an embarrassment to Soviet authorities and also had a negative effect on the morale of Ryumin and Lyhakov, both of whom had been looking forward to receiving visitors.
News of the cancellation of the Soyuz 33 flight was greeted by a series of grunts followed by the termination of all voice communication by the Salyut 6 crew.
[3] Lyakhov and Ryumin continued their station activities, including experiments intended to be carried out with the visiting crew (which had been delivered aboard the Progress 5 flight[4]), such as one called Pirin which investigated the formation of metal whiskers on zinc crystals, and another which made multi-spectral measurements of the daylight atmosphere.
The Soyuz had a new engine system, and its successful test flight gave the Salyut 6 crew a reliable return vehicle.
[3] Soyuz 32 was loaded with 130 kg of replaced instruments, processed materials, exposed film and other items with a total weight equal to that of the two cosmonauts.
This was because no more Progress flights were planned for 1979 and the Salyut's propulsion system was suspect, so the decision was to raise the station's orbit as high as possible before the crew returned to Earth.
Trouble happened again when the antenna became snared on the port, forcing the tired cosmonauts to perform an unscheduled space walk on 15 August to cut it loose.
Because the space walk was so late in the mission, the crew was apprehensive as they were not in the best physical condition to carry it out, so they left letters in the Soyuz return vehicle in case they did not survive.
[3] They packed several experiments in Soyuz 34 and departed the space station 19 August, reentering two days later and landing 170 km southeast of Dzhezkazgan.
Because the cosmonauts were so weakened from six months in zero gravity (a bouquet of flowers presented to them reportedly felt like "a ton of bricks"), a system of slides and chutes had to be deployed for them to exit the Soyuz descent module.