That entry and landing was totally FUBAR.
Posted on 04/22/2008 11:05:32 AM PDT by Snickering Hound
MOSCOW — The crew of the Soyuz capsule that landed hundreds of miles off target in Kazakhstan last weekend was in serious danger during the descent, a Russian news agency reported today.
Interfax quoted an unidentified space official as saying the capsule entered Earth's atmosphere with the hatch first instead of with its heat shields leading the way. As a result, the hatch suffered significant damage.
The official also said the TMA-11 capsule's antenna burned up during Saturday's descent, meaning the crew couldn't communicate properly with Russian Mission Control.
The Soyuz crew included U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson, South Korea's first astronaut, Yi So-yeon, and Russian flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko.
Alexander Vorobyov, a spokesman for the Russian Federal Space Agency, confirmed the descent had problems, saying the Soyuz hatch and the antenna suffered burn damage.
Russian officials were investigating what went wrong, he said.
The crew returning from the international space station endured severe gravitational forces because of the steeper-than-usual re-entry. The capsule landed some 260 miles off target.
On Monday, Yi told a news conference at the Star City cosmonaut training center outside Moscow that she was frightened by the descent. "At first I was really scared because it looked really, really hot and I thought we could burn," she told reporters.
The incident was the second time in a row — and the third since 2003 — that a Soyuz landing had gone awry.
A NASA spokesman said the space agency was in communication with the Russians about the capsule's off-target landing. John Yembrick said NASA was reserving comment until the Russians get to the root cause.
"We're being cautions and waiting until the Russians gather the data," he said.
One of the other articles on this said that they pulled as many as 10 Gs deceleration on the way down. You can spin it two ways...either the Russians really screwed up, or the Soyuz is built really tough!
}:-)4
The Soyuz is built to absorb most screwups. The Russians tend to brute-force solutions while we are more inclined to finesse them - less room for error, but some really cool stuff.
It didn't burn up so I'd go for tough.
Don’t pilot say any landing you walk away from is a good landing?
Put out the fire is job #2...
9 or 10 Gs is what US capsules sometimes experianced. I wonder how long they were pulling 10 Gs? I’d imagine that would wear you down very quickly.
Or ... Somebody up there is looking out for the Russians and their space jalopies.
Translation: We know exactly how the Russians screwed up, but we'll let them decide how to play it in public.
“After a change of underwear, the Soyuz crew appeared to be shaken but otherwise in good condition.”
Of course, it builds up to a peak and then decreases. I think that the 10 G regime would be less than 30 seconds.
The fact that they were coming in hatch-first is very interesting.
The Soyuz dates back to the early 60's. It flies with modules both in front of it (accessible to the hatch in front of the cosmonaut) and a service module behind. Also behind the cosmonaut, on the "back" end of the capsule, is the heat shield.
Both modules must be jettisoned from the capsule, and then the capsule oriented back-end (heat shield) forward for the reentry.
One one early Soyuz reentry, the service module failed to separate. When the craft finally hit the atmosphere with the SM still attached, it found its most stable orientation, which was unfortunately hatch-first. The cosmonaut watched the hatch heat up, and its organic coatings and vacuum seals start to fail, filling the capsule with noxious fumes. He figured he was a goner.
Then at the last moment, the bolts holding the service module in place burned through (due to the aero heating) and the module separated. The capsule then aerodynamically righted itself to its correct heat-shield-forward position for the remainder of the descent, thus saving his life.
In the present case, they could not have done the entire descent hatch-first; the capsule has to have righted itself at some point, for two reasons (if we take as a given that the crew survived without major trauma):
1. 30 seconds or more at 10 G's hanging forward against your restraints results in serious physical trauma, if not death.
2. It is unlikely that your capsule has been redesigned from the early days to survive a complete hatch-first reentry.
3. The chutes, landing retros, and cushioning bags don't work if you're coming in hatch-first, and thus you become dismembered by your restraint straps when you hit the ground.
Could this be a replay of the aforementioned early Soyz landing, with a failed service module separation? I guess we don't yet have enough information to tell.
My in-house rocket scientist (30 years with NASA, including early work instrumenting descent test vehicles at Wallops Island) speculates that either their horizon locator failed, disorienting the capsule and causing a bad de-orbit burn, or their computer malfunctioned and allowed them to overshoot their start of de-orbit burn, forcing them to take over and burn manually to avoid coming down in a bad place. The latter scenario explains the late arrival described in a previous article. If they did a manual burn for longer than normal to compensate for the late start, it would slow them enough to cause a steeper “ballistic” descent angle.
Let’s see how the Russians play it.
I’d say a screw-up but the capsule was tough, which saved the day. Those are not mutually exclusive options.
The Mercury capsule had a small wing on the front, pointy end so if the capsule somehow came in nose first out of control the air would catch the wing and turn the capsule around so it was heatshield first. Probably the Soyuz has something similar.
Yes, but if your ten inches shorter and your hair is burned off, it’s a tough sell.
To be honest, I’m shocked this one didn’t turn out the same way coming in with the heat shield in back.
That’s sure a stark picture. Thanks for the post.
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