Today I got to spend some time with my good old friend, Star City’s centrifuge.
Except that it wasn’t turning. I really got there pretty much by chance. I was scheduled for a class in manual descent, but the control panel we train on was installed in the centrifuge cabin, because the current prime and backup crews had their manual descent exams this week.
In front of me in the picture is the descent format, that shows the nominal descent curve. The curve starts on top with the moment of entry into the atmosphere and ends at the bottom with parachute deployment. The goal is to get as close as possible to the nominal point of parachute opening, but in our manual control scenarios we’re not on the curve to start with: we simulate that there is an error in the time in which we contact the atmosphere, which is typically somewhere between 40 seconds earlier to 40 seconds later.
As an example, if we entered the atmosphere later than planned, we need to dive in steeper to make the parachute deployment point. That can be tricky, because a steeper trajectory means also higher Gs. I guess that’s why they make us do the exam in the centrifuge: then we feel the consequence of our control inputs!
Reentry training.
(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://anne.cpamoa.free.fr/blog/index.php/category/logbook-samantha
04/10/2013