→ Logbook

Some more manual approach and docking practice today! Here’s a closer look at the instruments we use. I have talked in the L-352 Logbook about the periscope view, which is oriented forward when we approach the Station. In the picture you can see the view when the Soyuz has docked: the romboidal target is aligned with the periscope and we need to keep it in the center with the crosses aligned. In this particular docking, if you look carefully, you can see a minor misalignment in pitch (the horizontal line is a bit low), which is still fully acceptable. The big challenge in flying manually is that we don’t have measurements of distance and speed. We assess the distance visually using the grid and a conversion table based on the apparent dimension of the Service Module, the docking port and the target. For example, we know that when the Service Module diameter is as wide as 1 grid division we are at 200 meters; if the diameter of the docking port is 2 divisions, we are at 70 meters; and if the target is 3 divisions, we are at about 3 meters from contact. Speed assessment is a bit trickier and is based on the known acceleration of the thrusters. If we start from a closing speed of roughly zero and give a forward impulse of 10 seconds, we know that we have accelerated to about 0,4 meters per second. It gets more difficult in computer failure scenarios, because any time we use the orientation control on the right to adjust pitch or yaw, we also give a significant burn forward which is not compensated and needs to be accounted for. It’s especially important when we make contact with Station: we want the speed to be between 0.06 m/s and 0,15 m/s. Especially not higher than that! #SamLogbook (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

Today we finally had our first real Soyuz sim with our complete crew! Terry joined Anton and myself for a pretty adventurous afternoon in which we had to practice fighting for our life when smoke started to fill up the small volume of our descent module just after our simulated injection into orbit. In situations like this, your best friends are good crew coordination and your pressure suit! Normally air from the cabin is circulated through the suit. In case of smoke, however, we would immediately close the helmets, turn off the ventilation and start instead pure oxygen flow into the suit from the oxygen tanks. The continuous flow of fresh oxygen prevents fogging of the helmet, but it also means that we’re introducing oxygen into the cabin via the suit relief valve. As the oxygen concentration in the descent module grows, so does the flammability of the atmosphere. Latest at a concentration of 40% we want to fully depressurize, venting all the atmosphere to space. At that point we rely fully on the suits to keep us alive: they are designed to maintain an internal pressure of 0,4 atm, enough to avoid symptoms of decompression sickness, but also to make the suit very rigid. In a fire scenario we need to act very quickly: before we can depressurize we need to leak check the suits to make sure we’re not going to kill a crewmember when we vent the atmosphere. And in parallel we need to initiate the sequence that will lead us to a timely deorbit burn and a safe reentry. It was a very busy and very fun sim! And also, as we like to joke, a free sauna: with the helmet closed, the ventilation off and only the (smaller) oxygen flow, it gets quickly warm in the Sokol! #SamLogbook (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

Wet start of the week for Terry and myself today. For our first class this morning we headed to the Hydrolab, where we practiced operations that we would have to perform to attach ourselves safely in case we had to be airlifted by rescue helicopters. On your usual landing day, of course, helicopters simply land next to the descend module and rescue personnel helps the crew to get out. However, there could be situations (and there have been in the past) in which the helicopter can not land. And for sure there could be water splashdowns, especially in the case of a rocket failure in the later portion of the 8-min ride to orbit, when the descent module would end up in the Pacific. Terry and I got to practice both in the Sokol, our regular pressure suit, and in the Forel dry suit, which is part of our survival equipment. We had a crane instead of an actual helicopter, which makes things a bit easier. But we’ve both experienced real helicopter airlifts in the past as part of our training as military pilots. All operations leading up to the helo reascue- getting into the Forel, leaving the descent module, using signaling equipment and other survival items – we practiced last summer. You can see some pictures here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/astrosamantha/sets/72157634342550408/ Oh, and the Hydrolab of course is usually dedicated to spacewalking training. Here are some pictures of that, if you missed them: https://www.flickr.com/photos/astrosamantha/sets/72157633228799518/

I mentioned in yesterday’s Logbook that the Soyuz commander has a periscope view available. You can see the actual periscope in the attached picture. As you might have noticed, it has two circular openings offering two views that are offset by 90 degrees. To change between views a mirror inside the periscope is rotated. Most of the time the view of interest is the one “straight out” along the axis of the periscope. Whenever there is a need to fire the engines, the reference orientation in which the Soyuz puts itself is along the local vertical: in this orientation the periscope faces towards Earth. The optical setup is such that the commander sitting in the center seat will see the entire globe symmetrically in the field of view if the Soyuz is properly oriented. Also, any feature on the surface of the Earth will be running from top to bottom (or from bottom to top if it’s a braking attitude). When we approach the Station for rendez-vous the mirror is turned so that the commander can now have a forward view. This is the view we would use to align the Soyuz manually if we had to fly a manual docking. Should the mirror remain stuck on the initial position – you guessed it – we have backup option. We can use a camera view and a second target which is aligned with the camera: that’s the circular target on yesterday’s picture! Picture credit: NASA #SamLogbook (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:

When I’m in Star City, manual docking sessions are regularly put on my training schedule, so I can maintain and possibly improve my skills before serving as a backup crewmember next May. I have attached a picture of the simulator we use to practice manual flying. As you can see, the manual controls and the periscope view are only available in the center seat, where the commander sits. As a flight engineer sitting in the left seat, I don’t have access to those commands. Still, as a flight engineer I am required to show the same proficiency as the Soyuz commander. In spaceflight we like to plan for all possible contingencies: just as we design vehicles to have full redundancy on all critical systems, we also plan to have more than one crewmember capable of fulfilling critical tasks. And getting successfully to Station, you’ll probably agree, is pretty critical to mission success! #SamLogbook (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

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rt3udip7l4

A four-hour Soyuz sim with Anton today, practicing pre-launch ops, launch, post-orbital insertion checks and initial correction burns to get on our way to ISS. We didn’t get any major computer or engine failures, because those would force us to revert back to the two-day rendez-vous profile and the point today was to stick to the quick scheme. But we did get our share of little malfunctions, like a failure of the radio transmitter, a loss of O2 partial pressure readings or a broken fan in the CO2 scrubbing equipment. I also had a class on the medical supplies that will fly with us on the Soyuz. A little medicine box is stowed between the Commander’s and the Flight Engineer’s seat. As you can see in the picture, tablets are organized in booklets, so nothing floats away: practical in weightlessness! #SamLogbook (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

Back at the Soyuz controls today to fly some manual docking. Always a great way to end a training day! As you probably know, the Soyuz docks to the Space Station automatically if everything is nominal. Our manual docking training covers for two types of contingency: a failure of the on-board computer and a failure of the Kurs, which is the systems of antennas (both on the Soyuz and on Station) that gives the computer the necessary information about the relative position and speed with respect to ISS. A failure of the Kurs is a slightly lighter scenario, because a functioning computer can anyway make life easier in some ways. For example, when we make a correction of the orientation, the attitude thrusters inevitably give the Soyuz also a forward impulse: the computer automatically compensates for this with a burn in the aft direction, so that we don’t get forward speed that we never intended to acquire. If the computer fails, we have to do those compensations manually. We also have different scenarios in terms of illumination (day or night), attitude mode of the Station (inertially stabilized or rotating with the local vertical as it moves around the Earth) and initial conditions (how far from Station? with a safe speed or with excessive speed that requires immediate actions to avoid collision with Station? already in front of the docking port or not?) Also, different docking ports have slightly different challenges, mainly because of the different target alignment. In the pictures I have shown the four docking ports that a Soyuz can fly to: the Service Modules aft (yellow, an ATV is docked in the picture); Docking Compartment 1 and MRM2 (green, Soyuz or Progress docked in the picture); and MRM1 (red, port is free in the picture). We also practice relocating the Soyuz from one docking port to another. That’s by the way not a contingency mode: relocations can only be flown manually. #SamLogbook (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

Pretty exciting start of my three-week training session in Star City! Together with my Commander Anton, I got to do an acceptance verification of the Soyuz 713. That’s the spaceship of fellow Shenanigan Alex on his Soyuz TMA-13M flight to ISS in May next year, together with Max and Reid. It was an unexpected treat to be able to go! More often than not only Russian cosmonauts get to go, because the manufacturing schedule and our training trip schedule don’t necessarily harmonize. But they did in this case and so Anton and I spent the morning inside the orbital module and the descent module, which are stacked on top of each other at the Energia facilities in Korolev, on the outskirts of Moscow. With the help of the specialists, we worked our way through a long checklist of things to verify, from cargo straps to valve controls to accessibility of the CO2 scrubbing cartridges under the right seat. Anton is of course a veteran Soyuz commander, but for me it was the first chance to “feel” a real, brand-new, space-bound Soyuz! Later in the morning we were joined by specialists for Svezda, the seat manufacturer. They secured the pyrocharges of the seats and connected an external supply of pressurized air, so that we could experience the extension of the seat from the usual low position to the upper “armed”  position. On an actual flight profile, seats are extended before landing to provide dampening of the impact. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos, but on the Energia website I found these two pictures from a similar verification last year. Notice the fashionable headwear! #SamLogbook (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