Space Station repair mission

Ars Technica as tale of The little-known Soviet mission to rescue a dead space station that happened in in 1985.

This reads like a science-fiction short story.

It goes into great details of the steps taken by the crew of the Soyuz T-13 mission to bring they Salyut 7 station back to life. Salyut 7 is the predecessor of Mir and part of the continue presence of the Soviets, and later Russia, in orbit, converging to the ISS.

And spoiler:

A single faulty sensor was determined to be the cause of the station’s descent into a frozen darkness.

Everything wrong can happen, the smallest things can have a serious impact. This story is a testament to the ingenuity of the engineers and cosmonauts on the space programs applied to solving problems.