Quite intense Soyuz sim this morning with Anton and Terry, dealing with a fire in the Soyuz descent module.
Our scenario started just before undocking from ISS. First we performed, as usual, a leak check of the hatch, followed by a leak check of our Sokol suits. That’s what we were doing in the picture, by the way, as you can maybe tell by the inflated suits. If you missed it, you can read more about leak-checking the Sokols in this logbook entry.
Just after we detached from Station, we started seeing smoke coming from the control panel. We immediately closed the helmets and turned off ventilation in the suits, to avoid circulating toxic combustion products. At the same time we opened the appropriate valve to supply oxygen to the suits from our oxygen tanks.
We turned off all electric equipment, but of course in our simulation that didn’t kill the fire: we had to prepare to vent all our atmosphere to space. And rather quickly: with oxygen flowing into our suits and then out into the cabin via the regulator valve, the oxygen percentage increased quickly, getting close to that 40% that is considered a flammability hazard.
When times are rushed like this, Anton and I work in parallel different procedures. In this case, I would work the depressurization of the cabin, while he would start Program 5 to get the Soyuz oriented and ready for the reentry burn. However, the day had another surprise for us: my control display failed. Having only one display left forced us to work procedures in sequence, instead of in parallel. Needless to say, we were rushed.
Our infrared sensors also failed, which means that Anton had to orient the Soyuz manually and, having his hands busy, could not send any commands or change format on his display. That’s when I tried a little tool I had never used before: a small “remote control”, with which I could move the cursor on Anton’s display and send the “Enter” command. Not the fastest way, but it worked for us today!
(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/
18/02/2014