Two more exams passed!
Yesterday Anton and I both passed our manual descent exam in the centrifuge with a perfect score. If you missed it, you can read about how that all works in this logbook from our backup exam period, except that this exam took place in the smaller centrifuge, since the big 18-arm one is in maintenance:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SamanthaCristoforetti/posts/ELCTAqpDeK5
The “little” centrifuge did provide for some excitement: during my second run, it came unexpectedly to a stop after a loud bang. Turns out that some workers in a nearby area of the building accidentally pulled a cable which caused the centrifuge safety response to kick in and initiate an emergency stop. So it wasn’t a big deal: I was taken out for some verification and a test run and then we could resume the exam.
In the manual descent exam we pick only one envelope that contains all 10 profiles: 5 for the Commander and 5 for the Flight Engineer. I must say that Anton picked a really good envelope for me: all my dynamic runs (with the spinning centrifuge) were undershoots, meaning that we simulated entering the atmosphere too early. In undershoots, we try to fly a more shallow profile, leading to lower Gs: I never went past 3,6 Gs yesterday, which made it for a really comfortable ride. Well picked, Anton!
And today we passed our rendezvous exam. That’s when Anton gets to do the flying and I get to climb into the orbital module to get distance and velocity measurement with a laser range finder. I wrote some more about our rendezvous training here:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SamanthaCristoforetti/posts/PqVBBJfGcRD
Oh, yesterday we also went to Mission Control Moscow for a series of pre-flight briefs by the flight control team about current state of systems and ops. Incidentally, I learned that the more recent ballistic calculations have yielded a later launch time for us. Not a big change, just a couple of minutes. So, our new launch time is on Nov 23rd at 21:01:13 GMT.
22/10/2014