Result for: soyuz

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

I’m in there, somewhere! It takes a village to make the mold for the Soyuz seat liner, as I found out today. A couple of people were pouring liquid plaster on me, a couple more were holding me down so I stayed in good contact with the walls of the “bathtub” and someone was kindly covering my face, so I didn’t get plaster splashes on it. After a first rough mold was done, it took some iterations of adding and scraping away until I was confident that I had no hot spots and had an even contact all along my spine and, most importantly, my neck. A few more iterations in the actual Sokol spacesuit and the mold was done! The seat liner is especially important at reentry. As you know, there’s no such thing as a soft landing in the Soyuz: impact with the ground can be violent. But if the liner fits properly, it will distribute the impact load evenly and prevent injury. Oh, and yes, days like this do make it feel so real! Traduzione italiana a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ En español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/

Four hours of Soyuz sim this morning with Anton. And we didn’t have any major engine or computer failures today, not even a fire or a depressurization. But we certainly were not bored. The instructor threw at us many little malfunctions that we don’t see very often and are not so easy to detect. They might not kill you, but for sure they can easily turn your 6-hour trip to ISS into a two-day trip, if not dealt with properly. After lunch, I had a theoretical lesson with Terry about fighing fires in the Russian segment: how the smoke detectors work, what kind of gas masks and fire extinguishers we have, where they are located, what are the rules of engagement. Next we’ll have a practical session in the mockups, similar to the one you can see in the picture with ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli. Traduzione italiana a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/ En español aquí: https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/

I will spend six hours in the Soyuz simulator today! Actually in two different ones. The first one you can see in the picture. That day our crewmate Terry was with us as well, now he’s in the US. It’s in this type of sim that we practice all phases of flight. The hatch right behind us, btw, does not exist in the real spaceship: on the launchpad you have to lower yourself down from the top section, the orbital module. But for the daily work it would be a bit cumbersome. We also have another sim type that is used only to train manual rendezvous, manual docking, undocking-and-redocking to another port (this latter is always manual). I’ll have a practice session in the afternoon. In the morning I’ll be with Anton in the sim to practice ascent and post-ascent orbital operations. We’ll start out, as we would nominally, with the quick rendezvous procedures that I’ve talked about a couple of days ago. But in the process of doing the burns to get to Station, something will  happen that will make it impossible to keep the tight schedule. Fortunately, the “old” two-day rendezvous profile always applies! In agreement with the ground, we’ll transition to the longer profile and give ourselves some more time to fix the issues. We’ll just have to wait a bit longer for that warm meal!

Starting one more week of training here in Star City. I won’t be in the Soyuz sim today, but I’ll have a two hour briefing with my Commander Anton and our instructor Dima. The actual sim will be tomorrow morning and will probably be a “suited” one, meaning that we’ll wear our Sokol pressure suits. In the afternoon I’ll have a training session in manual re-entry. The Soyuz re-entry is normally controlled automatically by an onboard computer. However, there are some failure modes in which the computer won’t do it, either because it’s broken or because it doesn’t like the entry conditions into the atmosphere. In these special cases, before going for a ballistic re-entry, the crew can actually try and “save” the controlled re-entry mode by taking over manually. At that point, separation has already occurred and only the descent module remains. If you take a look at the picture, that’s the bell-shaped central part. The spherical orbital module and the cylindrical service module burn up on their own during re-entry. Controls are pretty easy – as they should be, since you’ll be under G and wearing the thick gloves of the pressure suit. However, ending up close to the nominal landing point while keeping the G loading within required limits… not easy at all. Well, that’s why we practice!

[cont.] As you might have guessed, there was one last leak check to be performed before undocking: the leak check of the hatch between the descent module and the orbital module. Eventually, we would separate from the orbital module and the descent module hatch would be the one protecting us from vacuum! Right now, of course, the pressure across the hatch was roughly equal: after all, we had just closed it a few minutes earlier. To perform a leak check, we had to create a pressure differential and to do that we would vent some air from the orbital module into space via the relief valve. Anton selected the closing command on his display, so that he would be able to reclose the valve with a simple button push. Once that was done, I opened the relief valve. On our life support display we watched the pressure in the orbital module drop, until Anton sent the command to close the valve. We had created a pressure differential of about 150 mm Hg and now we would check for any pressure equalization across the hatch: maximum acceptable pressure drop in the descent module was 25 mm Hg in 25 minutes. At the end of the monitoring time we were well within that requirement: leak check passed! Finally, it was time to wait. Patiently. For almost an hour: a buffer time inserted in our timeline in case of problems. Let’s imagine, for example, an issue with the suit leak check: we would have disconnected and reconnected the gloves, opened and reclosed the helmet, making really sure that no debris was caught in the sealing surface, and then we would have performed the leak check again. Or let’s say that the descent module hatch would have failed the leak check: we would have equalized the pressure, opened the hatch, verified that the sealing surfaces were intact and clean and then reclosed for another leak check. All things that require time. But since everything had gone smoothly in our pre-departure ops, there we were, fully strapped in our seats, waiting. It’s nice not to be rushed, but of course the “sitting” position in the Soyuz is not the most comfortable one, even for a small person like me – I can imagine how painful it can be for bigger crewmembers to sit for so long with the knees bent towards the chest! We talked, we joked, we took some glances out the windows, we reviewed procedures for the upcoming reentry, we thought about our friends on the Space Station, still so close, but already belonging to another world. Then, at 13:17:30 Moscow time I sent the command to turn on the Soyuz docking system. One minute later, at 13:18:30 I sent the next command: Hooks Open. The electrical motors of the docking system started to drive the hooks that kept us attached to the Space Station to the open position. Within a couple of minutes the hooks were fully open and the spring-loaded pushers imparted to our Soyuz a separation velocity: on the periscope view in front of Anton’s central seat we could observe the docking port further and further away. That was it, we were leaving. Good bye Space Station! Good bye Scott, Misha, Gennady! [cont] Photo: our Soyuz departing from ISS Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int RICORDATE DI VOTARE PER AVAMPOSTO42 AI MACCHIANERA ITALIAN AWARDS! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=822247314539790 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha (Trad ES) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE) Deutsche Übersetzung von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad RUS) Русский перевод +Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com

This is the third entry in a final series of logbooks looking back at departure, landing and re-adaptation! [cont.] After depressurizing the vestibule, we observed for a few minutes the pressure indications for the descent module and the orbital module of our Soyuz: both stable, so there was no obvious, fast leak. (Not that we were expecting one!). Of course we needed to check for a slow leak as well, before we committed to leaving the Station and relying on the Soyuz hatch to keep our air inside. The full leak check would take 30 min, with measurements of the vestibule pressure recorded every 5 min, but since there was no fast pressure drop it was safe for us to reopen the hatch of the descent module and float back to the orbital module to don our Sokol suits. I went first, as we had planned. Anton and Terry stayed in the descent module while I used the Soyuz toilet. I wanted to empty my bladder as late as possible: I did wear a diaper, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to use it in the several hours of weightlessness that still lay between us and the deorbit burn. Somehow diapers and weightlessness don’t get along for me, as I had experienced during ascent. I put on my biomedical belt in direct contact with the skin and then my Sokol underwear, periodically calling the vestibule pressure readings from the manovacumeter to Anton and Terry, so they could report them to the ground. Over the course of 30 minutes, the maximum allowed pressure increase to call the hatches air tight was 1 mm Hg. Anton joined me in the orbital module to help me don the Sokol. To make things faster, I basically held on to keep myself as still as possible and let Anton take care of tying and zipping up everything. One of the cool things about being an astronaut: you can let somebody else dress you as an adult and nobody laughs at you! As Anton pointed out, we didn’t have a whole lot of time. Because of a test of the Kurs antennas, which would run in the background during our undocking, the ground was going to send the activation command of the guidance and navigation system over an hour earlier than they normally would on a typical departure day schedule. We were already talking Moscow-time at that point, since this the time on which we run Soyuz ops: the night before we had diligently written the significant times in our checklists, based on the radiogram sent up by Mission Control Moscow. Not only vacuum separated us now from the Space Station but, in a way, also three hours! After I was all dressed up in my Sokol, which would keep me alive in case of depressurization during re-entry, I took a last sip of water from a bag that would stay in the orbital module, grabbed one last snack and then floated to my seat in the descent module. It didn’t escape me that those were my last few seconds of free floating: once strapped in in my seat, I wouldn’t unstrap until after landing on Earth. [cont] Photo: in the Sokol a few days before undocking for a preliminary leak check. #SamLogbook #Futura42 Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int RICORDATE DI VOTARE PER AVAMPOSTO42 AI MACCHIANERA ITALIAN AWARDS! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=822247314539790 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha (Trad ES) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE) Deutsche Übersetzung von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad RUS) Русский перевод +Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com