A week into our quarantine in Baikonour and six days to launch, things are picking up speed here, as more and more specialists are showing up to join in the effort. While all our lessons so far have been with our own instructors from Star City, today we met some new faces.
For example, today we had a meeting with representatives of the Search and Rescue (SAR) team. They just worked a Soyuz landing last week and now are turning their attention to their upcoming launch. Of course, if all goes well there’s not need for the them to intervene on a launch day, but believe me: they’re ready.
When Alex, Reid and Max will launch next week, SAR assets will be deployed along the ground path of their ascent to orbit all the way to the ocean, including a ship standing by in the Sea of Japan. Should a rocket failure occur at any time, the appropriate unit will be alerted and SAR assets will be immediately deployed to the expected landing location based on the time of the failure. More precise information on the expected impact site will be obtained as soon as the parachute opens and a positioning system is activated.
After nominal insertion into orbit, the SAR teams don’t completely stand down, but some units remain in alert until the Soyuz is docked to ISS – which could be full two days later, if there is a transition to the two-day rendezvous profile. Should the crew need to perform an emergency reentry for any reason, the guardian angels will be ready to meet them.
Talking about things getting real, Reid and Alex now have their tree along the ones of every cosmonaut and astronaut ever departing to space from Baikonour!
Photo: NASA/Victor Zelentsov
(Trad IT) Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui:
https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/
(Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí:
https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/
(Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici:
https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha/
23/05/2014