posted 04-17-2008 03:27 PM               

"Well, today is the handover ceremony," began Whitson, beginning the now customary presentation. "I'm officially handing over the International Space Station to Sergei Volkov. I'm very happy to do so."

"Expedition 16 has consisted of a lot of crew members, some who are here, some who are not — Clay Anderson, Dan Tani, Leo Eyharts, Yuri and Garrett and myself. We've had a really great privilege and honor to be here on the station when so much has changed. We feel like we have handed over a very beautiful station to you guys and look forward to your work."

"I know you are going to be a great commander, Sergei, and so I just wanted to hand it over to you," said Whitson.

"Thank you very much," replied commander Sergei Volkov, "and Expedition 17 take the station under our control. Thank you very much for such a precious station and a beautiful station. We wish you have a safe trip back home. Good luck!"

"As parting gifts, we have a couple for you. The first is... Garrett!" Whitson announced while laughing. Volkov proceeded to accept his new flight engineer, Garrett Reisman, who had tucked himself into a ball.

"He's your first gift and I know he's going to be a great addition to your crew."

"And the second gift, which is almost as important as Garrett, is the leftover sauce!" Whitson said while unveiling a small bouquet of food condiments.

"Thank you, thank you very much!" exclaimed Volkov.

"Yeah, you're in control now. You have the sauce," joked Whitson. "It's great to have you guys on-board and I am looking forward to watching you with great pleasure."

posted 04-19-2008 12:46 AM               

Soyuz TMA-11 undocked from the International Space Station at 12:06 a.m. CDT on Saturday.

"Here we go," said Peggy Whitson.

"We're seeing separation," added Yuri Malenchenko.

The Soyuz will will perform a deorbit burn at about 2:40 a.m. to begin the re-entry through the Earth's atmosphere. Landing is set for about 3:30 a.m. on the steppes of Kazakhstan.

posted 04-19-2008 04:31 AM               

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A Soyuz capsule carrying South Korea's first astronaut landed in northern Kazakhstan Saturday, several hundred kilometers off-target, Russian space officials said.

Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said the condition of the crew — South Korean bioengineer Yi So-yeon, American astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko — was satisfactory, though the three had been subjected to severe G-forces during the re-entry.

The Russian TMA-11 craft touched down around 0830 GMT some 260 miles off target, Lyndin said — a highly unusual distance given how precisely engineers plan for such landings. It was also around 20 minutes later than scheduled.

Officials said the craft followed a so-called "ballistic re-entry" — a very steep trajectory that subjects the crew to extreme physical force.

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posted 04-19-2008 08:08 AM               

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NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, the first female commander of the International Space Station, returned to Earth at approximately 4:30 a.m. EDT Saturday, ending a mission during which she conducted five spacewalks and set a new record in American spaceflight.

Whitson and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, members of the 16th crew to live and work aboard the station, safely landed their Soyuz spacecraft in the steppes of Kazakhstan. Spaceflight participant So-yeon Yi also returned to Earth aboard the Soyuz. The landing was approximately 295 miles from the expected landing site, delaying the recovery forces’ arrival to the spacecraft by approximately 45 minutes.

Whitson, 48, has accumulated more time in space than any U.S. astronaut in history. She and Malenchenko, who launched to the station on Oct. 10, 2007, spent 192 days in space. This was Whitson’s second flight to the station. She served almost 185 days as a flight engineer on the Expedition 5 crew, which launched June 5, 2002, and returned to Earth Dec. 7, 2002. Whitson has totaled 377 days in space during two missions. On April 16, she surpassed the 374-day record set by astronaut Mike Foale during his six flights.

Malenchenko, 46, a Russian Air Force colonel, completed his third long-duration spaceflight. He spent 126 days aboard the Russian space station Mir in 1994, and commanded Expedition 7, spending 185 days in space in 2006. He also was a member of the STS-106 crew of shuttle Atlantis on a 12-day mission to the station in 2000. He has accumulated 515 days in space during his four flights. That is the ninth highest total of cumulative time.

The Expedition 16 crew worked with experiments across a wide variety of fields, including human life sciences, physical sciences and Earth observation. Many of the experiments are designed to gather information about the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body, which will help with planning future exploration missions to the moon and Mars.

The Expedition 16 crew members undocked their Soyuz spacecraft from the station at 1:06 a.m. The deorbit burn to slow the Soyuz and begin its descent toward the Earth began at 3:40 a.m.

Before undocking, Whitson and Malenchenko bid farewell to the new station crew, Expedition 17 Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineers Oleg Kononenko and Garrett Reisman. Volkov and Konenko launched to the station April 8. They were accompanied by Yi who flew under a commercial contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency. Reisman came to the station aboard shuttle Endeavour on the STS-123 mission, which launched March 11.

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posted 04-19-2008 12:53 PM               

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The Russian Soyuz space capsule carrying a three-member crew including South Korea's first astronaut landed Saturday in Kazakhstan, about 420 kilometers from the planned landing area, Russia's Interfax news agency said.

Interfax reported the spacecraft's landing was rough. Earlier, Sergei Puzanov, the NASA representative at Russian Space Mission Control, said all the crewmembers were fine.

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posted 04-19-2008 12:58 PM               

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Originally posted by SRB:
This seems to be their biggest miss in many years. I wonder what went wrong?

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posted 04-19-2008 01:43 PM               

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Originally posted by Tom:
...was this quite common during MIR and Salyut returns?

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posted 04-19-2008 05:49 PM               

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Originally posted by issman1:
Is it a problem exclusive to the TMA series?

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quote:

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In which case, it must now be a serious flight safety risk despite Russian statements to the contrary.

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posted 04-19-2008 05:50 PM               

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Originally posted by dom:
Can anyone explain to me why ballistic re-entries take place sometimes with the Soyuz capsule?

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posted 04-19-2008 06:00 PM               

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Originally posted by dom:
Can anyone explain to me why ballistic re-entries take place sometimes with the Soyuz capsule?

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...to a failure in the BUSP-M guidance system, which is necessary in order to carry out a controlled re-entry. This guidance system reads gyroscopes and accelerometers and sends appropriate commands to attitude control thrusters.

The yaw control channel, a sub-unit of the BUSP-M produced 'undefined' readings, indicating a malfunction. This caused higher control functions to take the BUSP-M system out of the control loop and convert to the ballistic re-entry mode.

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It has not yet been released what caused the ballistic reentry during Soyuz TMA-11's return this morning.

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...is it something that Orion designers will have to worry about now?

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posted 04-20-2008 01:56 PM               

I asked about the landing, among many other things, and she made quite light of the re-entry itself, as they had trained for it and done the ballistic profile in the centrifuge. She suggested the most alarming part of the experience was realising they were so far off target and had no comms. Malenchenko opened the hatch and exited to use the phone, and she followed him. The implication was that Peggy did not. There were some local farmers there who had come to help in any way they could. All told, it was about a hour until the rescue forces arrived and took control of the site.

posted 04-21-2008 09:46 PM               

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Why did alarming details of the landing — including the ignition of a brush fire that set the collapsed parachute ablaze and filled the landed spacecraft with smoke — take so long to reach the public?

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posted 04-21-2008 10:57 PM               

There is a growing murmur of reports that the entry was far, FAR more "off nominal" than even an 'ordinary' ballistic descent. So far, in fact, that the crew may be lucky to be alive. Let's see what the next few hours reveal...

posted 04-22-2008 12:47 AM               

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Originally posted by dom:
Quality control apparently...

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And Oberg is also "relying" on a Russian tabloid journalist to make such claim... And from the article mentioned above, I like the idea of having Russian workforce "dying" on the production line...

I certainly wouldn't want to bring up the "bias" issue again... And I'm not suggesting everything's fine on the Russian's side but weren't Russia's problems in a way triggered by the US quitting the shuttle and ISS programs?

posted 04-22-2008 06:51 AM            

It was predictable how Perminov initially blamed the TMA-11 crew (reminiscent of Tsibliyev and Lazutkin in '97)!

But as I wrote earlier Soyuz will soon be the only ride to the ISS. Isn't it time the partners swallowed their pride and invited China until Orion comes on-line?

It should be no problem to modify Shenzhou with either a Russian or US docking adapter.

posted 04-22-2008 08:51 AM               

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Originally posted by blacklion1:
Does anyone have any updated reports on the status of Peggy Whitson?

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"I'm feeling much better and every day it's getting better, so I'll be all right. I feel a little bit weaker, in the sense of muscle weakness. Last time I felt very strong after landing and this time, a little weaker. But again, that's a part of the process of rehabilitation, so I'm confident I'll be able to recover that as well."

posted 04-22-2008 10:53 AM               

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The Russian Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft that carried two space station crew members and a South Korean guest cosmonaut back to Earth apparently suffered a failure, possibly involving explosive bolts, that prevented one of two sections connected to the central crew capsule from separating properly before re-entry, sources say.

The capsule apparently entered the discernible atmosphere in an unusual orientation and was subjected to relatively violent buffeting until the attached section finally broke away, as planned in such scenarios, allowing the descent module to settle into a normal heat-shield-down orientation. The failure of the lower propulsion module to cleanly separate is believed to have forced the craft into a steep, so-called ballistic re-entry.

...

What happened Saturday is not yet clear. Sources say the propulsion module apparently did not immediately separate from the descent module just prior to entry, possibly because an explosive bolt failed to fire. As a result, the crew cabin apparently did not enter the atmosphere in the proper orientation. The attached module broke free at some point, allowing the crew cabin to right itself and continue the descent in the proper orientation. Sources said smoke was present in the crew cabin during or just after the descent, but it's not clear what might have caused it or when it occurred.

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posted 04-22-2008 11:28 AM               

"As a result of great heating impact, the hatch burned quite significantly and the transmitter's array melted down, which severed contact with the spacecraft. Part of the pressure equalization valve, which is located on the outside, burned off."

posted 04-22-2008 03:16 PM               

Just like the old days when the Soyuz first flew. I remember reading they had a few flights where the same type of separation thing happened.

posted 04-22-2008 03:23 PM               

A Soyuz suffered its "worst case" scenario - two modules still attached during a re-entry - and the crew lived to tell the (admittedly scary) tale. It's a rough ship!

The two recent events are probably random chance 'rolls of the dice' - just bad luck - after many years of good landings.

posted 04-22-2008 04:26 PM               

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Originally posted by dom:
It's a rough ship!

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Prior STS-107, there were at least a couple of flights that suffered significant TPS damage from foam loss (one on the shuttle RCC). Just as there were a couple of flights prior to STS-51L that showed the O-Rings in the SRBs weren't doing the job of sealing in the exhaust gasses very well. We all know the results of those flights.

posted 04-22-2008 04:27 PM               

"We really need to get the capsule back to understand what occurred, to see what happened," said Gerstenmaier, who returned from Russia on Monday evening. "The data recorder on-board will provide critical information. A detailed inspection of the capsule needs to be done."

Gerstenmaier offered his confidence in the Russians' investigation, especially in light of this being the second Soyuz in a row to return from the space station on a ballistic trajectory.

"At first appearances, it looks like some of the same events occurred on this Soyuz vehicle [as did on the one before], and because of that potential similarity, they have kind of kicked the gain up on this investigation to make sure they get answers as soon as they can."

Gerstenmaier revealed that Soyuz TMA-10, which landed in October 2007, not only experienced a ballistic return (which was caused by a faulty cable), but had also encountered a "separation issue" between its descent and propulsion modules. A cable running between the two sections — different from the one that triggered the ballistic mode — had continued to relay thruster data even after the explosive bolts holding the modules together had fired, indicating that the two were still connected.

A similar failed separation led to the nearly-fatal reentry of Boris Volynov aboard Soyuz 5 in January 1969. In both cases, the modules finally separated due to the aerodynamic stresses pushing against them.

"The other event on the last Soyuz was the separation event where we believe one of the pyro bolts that attached the instrumentation section, the pyro section, failed to separate properly. That kept the instrumentation section and the propulsion section attached to the spacecraft for a longer period of time than desired," he explained.

"Those interfaces are designed such that even if the pyros don't separate the bolt, eventually the heating and aerodynamic forces will cause that interface to break and separate. We believe that is what happened on the last Soyuz."

"The Russians know that from the fact that there is a cable interface that runs between the descent capsule and the instrumentation - propulsion section. Commands were able to go across that cable and actually fire thrusters on the propulsion section of the other module on the last flight, so therefore we know that the interface was not broken as it should have been at the separation command and that's how we have the data from the previous flight that that occurred."

Sources cited by Russian news reports have suggested that the failed separation of the two Soyuz sections caused the vehicle to enter the Earth's atmosphere nose- or hatch-down, leading to severe heating damage and a loss of communications with the ground.

Gerstenmaier confirmed the radio cut-off but said they did not yet know its cause. He attributed the separation reports to speculation by crew members Peggy Whitson and Yuri Malenchenko, who reported seeing and feeling "off-nominal" motion in the capsule.

"They felt some anomalous motion in the spacecraft," described Gerstenmaier, in response to a question from collectSPACE.com. "They felt some kind of bumping around — a movement forward in their seats, a movement aft in their seats, a movement to the right, a movement to the left."

"So, they felt a general kind of jostling in their seats that they had not felt before and that was prior to the initiation of the ballistic mode on the spacecraft and after the separation command. During that period of time, they experienced some off-nominal motion. They physically felt some off-nominal motion in the spacecraft."

Gerstenmaier said it might take several months before the Russians could report what had transpired. In the interim, he warned against making guesses as to the cause. "I don't want us to speculate, as I think that drives the discussion or drives the concern maybe in a direction that isn't appropriate for us at this time," he said.

posted 04-22-2008 06:26 PM               

Maybe the next time you speak with Jim Oberg you ask him to make sure the graphics folks at NBC correct there depiction of the re-entry.

Tonight on the Evening News with Brian Williams, they showed the crew compartment as the service module and the orbital module as the crew compartment entering the atmosphere. It was disappointing to see them get it so wrong.

posted 04-22-2008 06:49 PM               

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Originally posted by KSCartist:
Tonight on the Evening News with Brian Williams, they showed the crew compartment as the service module and the orbital module as the crew compartment entering the atmosphere.

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Via Oberg, here is a Japanese artist's representation (source: "Newton" magazine) of Soyuz 5, offering a better depiction of the proper configuration.