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Salyut 7 (English: Salute 7) was the final space station launched into low Earth orbit as part of the Soviet Union's Salyut Program. It was the last monolithic soviet space station, acting as a testbed for docking of additional modules and expanded station operations in preparation for the modular design of subsequent space stations, such as space station Freedom.
It had two docking ports, one on either end of the station, to allow docking with unmanned resupply craft, and a wider front docking port to allow safer docking with a heavy Cosmos module.
My feeble translation of the Russian characters beginning with the left leg of the pentagon, proceeding clockwise: "Long Duration", "Oribital", "Scientific", "Space", "Station".
Launched on April 19, 1982, on a Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in the USSR, Salyut-7 re-entered earth's atmosphere, February 7, 1991. less than 10 months before the dissolution of the USSR.
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