Manual space

The ISS is ready to receive a “large” crew

The commanders of two spacecraft - the Russian Soyuz TMA-14 and the American shuttle Discovery - had to demonstrate their piloting skills last Saturday. Circumstances required Gennady Padalka and Lee Archambolt to “push” automation into the background in order to complete the assigned tasks. And both of them successfully dealt with them. Padalka manually docked the spacecraft to the International Space Station, and a few hours later Archambolt managed to land the shuttle, which had undocked from the ISS three days earlier, at a weather-stricken Cape Canaveral. In case of failure, both docking and landing would most likely have to be postponed for almost a day.

However, in the end, everything went almost according to schedule - the Soyuz docked nine minutes earlier than planned, and a relatively comfortable “window” for Discovery in the sky over Florida appeared almost an hour and a half later than expected. And if you can’t argue with the weather - low clouds and strong winds could completely “close” the spaceport on the east coast of the United States, then experts still have to figure out the failure of the automation on the Russian ship.

As the flight director of the Russian segment of the ISS, Vladimir Solovyov, explained immediately after the docking, at the moment the Soyuz TMA-14 approached the orbital station, a malfunction was recorded on one of the ship’s engines, which the automation classified as significant. After this, the programs that controlled the ship had to begin moving away from the station. But the Mission Control Center near Moscow decided that a person should take charge of the matter. Gennady Padalka, having checked the operation of the engines, began rendezvous manually. As a result, the 19th main crew, which in addition to Padalka includes NASA astronaut Michael Barratt, as well as space tourist Charles Simonyi “attached” to him, ended up on the ISS a little earlier than planned.

The 19th expedition will replace its predecessors Michael Fink and Yuri Lonchakov on board the International Station. They had just seen off the third member of their crew - Sandra Magnus returned to earth as part of the Discovery team. Instead, Japanese representative Koichi Wakata remained in orbit. Fink and Lonchakov, together with Simoni, will return to Earth on April 7, and those remaining in orbit will have to complete a historic task - to prepare for the planned increase in the ISS crew to six people. According to plans, another Russian Roman Romanenko, a representative of the European Space Agency, Belgian Frank de Winn, and Canadian Robert Thirsk will work in orbit in June. In this way, the “standard” number of the International Space Station will finally be achieved - increasing the previously permanent crew was not allowed by the Columbia shuttle accident in February 2003 and a long break in American shuttle flights. Russia, even with financial support from the United States, would not be able to supply a full-fledged crew.

Now the orbital station is close, as NASA puts it, to “full power mode.” The Discovery flight, which ended Saturday evening, was largely aimed at expanding the capabilities of the ISS. The shuttle crew installed a new set of solar panels, as well as equipment for the regeneration system, which will allow the new sanitary and hygienic unit for the American segment of the station to be transferred from test mode to operational mode. Even the not-so-successful actions of the astronauts in outer space, where they failed to bring the bracket for fastening the leaky cargo platform into working condition, apparently did not upset NASA leaders. It was calculated overseas that the station is now exactly 81% ready to receive six permanent cosmonauts and astronauts.

Fedor SEREBRYANSKY