Today is a medical day. We’re doing cardiovascular studies in the vacuum garment “Chibis” — essentially vacuum trousers, where reduced pressure simulates the effects of gravity on the body. Recording and evaluation are done on the onboard medical equipment complex “Aelita.” At the same time, we perform ultrasound scanning of the heart using the domestic “Argument” apparatus. I spent a whole hour practicing the search for the “Argument” sensors on the mitral valve, aorta, and ventricles, so that during the comm session I could immediately transmit a good heart image on television. Similar equipment — the “Echograph,” developed in France — was also delivered to us on board for the Soviet-French program.

Then we assembled the technology unit “Korund,” which came with the cargo ship. Before us, on “Salyut-6,” technology experiments had already been conducted on the “Splav,” “Kristall,” and “Isparitel” units, but that was at the research level. Now the station has two technology units: “Magma-F” and “Korund.”

“Magma-F” can also be classified as an experimental unit, because it’s essentially the same “Kristall,” only more refined. An accelerometer block and an autonomous magnetic recorder have been added for measuring and logging the vibration spectrum during melting, generated by the many instruments, as well as micro-accelerations caused by the station’s dynamics, gravitational, and aerodynamic forces. During the Soviet-French expedition we logged about 30 hours on it and produced a number of capsules with materials: cadmium sulfide and selenide, bismuth gallium.

“Korund” is already a semi-industrial unit of a new generation for growing crystals that will be used in the manufacture of advanced devices. It extends the capabilities of the “Splav” and “Kristall” technology furnaces. In “Splav,” to obtain crystals, the thermal field was varied; in “Kristall,” with a constant thermal field, the capsule was advanced out.

In “Korund,” a combined mode is used, where the thermal field can be varied up to 1,270 degrees C at a heating rate of 0.1 to 10 degrees C per minute, with capsule advance ranging from several millimeters per day to 100 millimeters per minute.

The samples themselves have grown larger: 300 millimeters long, 25 millimeters in diameter, and depending on the specific gravity of the raw material, the weight of the crystal obtained in one capsule can range from several hundred grams to a kilogram and a half.

The unit’s drum is loaded simultaneously with 12 capsules of different materials, and after programs are entered, it works automatically without cosmonaut intervention, processing each capsule in turn. From a single load one can obtain up to 18 kilograms of the most valuable semiconductor materials, both as single crystals and as epitaxial films with electrophysical characteristics that are difficult to achieve with terrestrial technology. Of course, on Earth there may be more sophisticated units than “Korund,” but the quality of the materials obtained in them is incomparable to what can be obtained in space thanks to a new technological parameter — weightlessness.

Along with “Korund” we received holographic equipment that allows recording on photographic plates the physical processes in liquid media, such as mass transfer phenomena: separation of biological mass fractions, the inception and development of convection under different gradients of temperature and substance concentration.

Later on Earth, using a laser, they’ll obtain volumetric images of the process from the plate, enabling a more detailed and vivid picture of the phenomenon under study. On orbit 1391 there was a meeting with radio correspondent Sergei Zheleznyak, and he asked: “Is it possible to grow accustomed to the beauty you see through the porthole?” I answered that you can’t grow accustomed to beauty — it’s dynamic.

The views of Earth from space change with the season, the weather, the state of the atmosphere, the Sun’s position, just as the perception of beauty in art, architecture, and painting changes with age, mood, and education. But you can become tired of beauty, just as you can of gray routine and the gloom of the world around you. So beauty for a person is the joy of discovering it against the backdrop of the unremarkable but very necessary. It gives a surge of emotion that produces an influx of energy, mood, and creativity. A person is psychologically renewed by an encounter with beauty, and these encounters are discoveries of something new or something already seen. Flying is getting harder and harder. Visual observations calm me.

The hardest thing in the flight is not to lose your temper — in communication with the ground and within the crew — because against the backdrop of accumulating fatigue there are serious lapses, and tense moments arise in which you must not allow an explosion. Otherwise — a crack. If one appears, no one can help us; we’re alone. Here salvation lies only in each other and in our shared work.