Category Manned Spaceflight Log II—2006-2012

In 2004 a concept for a new program to send humans back to the Moon and out to Mars was announced by NASA as part of the Vision for Exploration. Under the label of the Constellation Program, a new Crew Exploration Vehicle was pro­posed for human crews to meet those objectives and eventually received the name Orion. In 2005 designs were sought from industry and in August 2006 Lockheed Martin Corporation won the contract. Development began on the spacecraft and program as the replacement for the Space Shuttle, but the change of administra­tion in the White House and a new President saw the cancellation of Constellation as originally envisaged. Orion was redesignated the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and is currently undergoing development for a wide range of missions to the Moon, Mars, and the asteroids as well as a backup vehicle for cargo and crews

supporting ISS operations. Numerous ground and atmospheric tests and mock-ups have been developed and though it is expected that the first unmanned flight tests of the vehicle in space will commence around 2014, the first astronauts are not expected to fly on board the MPCV/Orion before 2020.

2011-023A June 7, 2011

Pad 1, Site 5, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of

Kazakhstan

November 22, 2011

Near the town of Arkalyk, Republic of Kazakhstan Soyuz-FG (R-7) (serial number И15000-037),

Soyuz TMA-M (serial number 702)

167 da 6h 12 min 5 s Eridanus

ISS resident crew transport ISS-28/29 (7S)

Flight crew

VOLKOV, Sergei Alexandrovich, 38, Russian Federation Air Force, Russian, RSA, Soyuz TMA-M commander, ISS-28/29 flight engineer, second mission Previous mission: Soyuz TMA-12/ISS-17 (2008)

FURUKAWA, Satoshi, 47, civilian (Japanese), JAXA, Soyuz TMA-M and ISS-28/29 flight engineer

FOSSUM, Michael Edward, 53, NASA, Soyuz TMA-M flight engineer, ISS-28 flight engineer, ISS-29 commander, third mission Previous missions: STS-121 (2006), STS-124 (2008)

Flight log

Flying the second upgraded TMA-M spacecraft into space were another truly international trio, who docked their spacecraft with the Rassvet module on June 9 (June 10, Moscow time). They entered the space station in the early hours of the following day to complete the required safety and update briefings. During the 2-day flight to the space station, the crew had completed the flight development tests begun on Soyuz TMA-M, further qualifying the new vehicle for operational missions.

In the early part of their residency, the three new crew members participated in preparations for the departure of the ATV-2 resupply vehicle from the aft Zvezda port on June 20 and the arrival of Progress M-11M at that same docking location three days later. On June 28, the six crew members had to shelter in their respective Soyuz craft (TMA-21/TMA-02M) as an unidentified piece of orbital debris (designated Object 82618, unknown) passed within just 820 ft (249.93 m) of the station, possibly the closest near miss in the station’s history.

The crew’s experiment program included, in the Russian segment, 725 sessions on 50 experiments, of which 47 were continuations from the previous increments.

To accomplish this target, there were 359 hours 20 minutes planned for the crew, as well as supportive work during the exchange of crews. There was no dedicated ISS-29 press kit released (instead the kits went from ISS-27/28 to 30/31) to identify research work in the American segment, but it is clear that the work continued without interruption in all sections of the station during this period.

The final Shuttle mission (STS-13 5) arrived at the station on July 10 and remained docked with the station until July 18. On July 12, resident crew members Fossum and Garan donned American EMUs and exited the Quest airlock for a 6h 30min space walk (see STS-135 entry) which was the final space walk of the Shuttle era. On August 1, Volkov accompanied Samokutyaev on a 6h 23 min EVA from the Russian segment (see Soyuz TMA-21 entry).

On August 14, the Zarya module, the first element of the station launched in November 1998, completed 73,000 orbits of Earth.

On September 14, Fossum assumed command of the outpost from Borisenko, ending the ISS-28 phase and commencing the ISS-29 phase. The official end of the outgoing expedition occurred with the undocking of TMA-21 two days later. With the departure of the ISS-28 prime crew, the ISS-29 crew continued as a three – person residence pending the arrival of TMA-22. For the next few weeks, science and maintenance occupied the crew’s time. This included work with Robonaut 2, putting the unit through some at times difficult mobility tests of its hand and neck joints.

On September 29, after a decade of being the only space station in orbit, the ISS was joined by a new neighbor—the Chinese Tiangong-1 (“Heavenly Palace – 1”) mini space module. This was similar to, but slightly smaller than, the early Soviet Salyut space stations launched in the 1970s. A month later, on October 31, the unmanned Shenzhou 8 was launched into orbit on a mission to evaluate the new space station’s docking mechanism. Clearly, a new era of space station operations had begun.

Back on the ISS the science work continued. This trio would be joined by their colleagues when Soyuz TMA-22 docked at the Poisk module on November 16. This was to be a short six-person residency, due to the delays caused by the loss of Progress M-12M the previous August. The first few days of the full crew were a busy time, as the TMA-02M trio prepared to return home. The formal transfer of command from Fossum to Dan Burbank occurred on November 20 and the ISS-29 trio undocked their Soyuz in the early hours of November 22.

The atmospheric burn-up of the discarded modules was captured on video by the station residents as the Descent Module containing the three crew members continued its descent towards Earth. The crew landed safely, although in subzero temperatures. Shortly afterwards, Volkov was flown back to the Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow and Fossum and Furukawa flew on a NASA jet back to Houston, Texas for postffight readaptation and debriefings.

The crew had spent 166 days on board the station out of the 168 days logged in space. Of these, 97 days were spent as part of the ISS-28 expedition and 67 as prime ISS-29 residents.

Milestones

283rd manned space flight 116th Russian manned space flight 109 th manned Soyuz

2nd manned Soyuz TMA-M and 2nd test flight of the new variant 27th ISS Soyuz mission (7S)

28/29th ISS resident crew

Flight crew

FERGUSON, Christopher John, 49, USN Retired, NASA commander, third mission

Previous missions: STS-115 (2006), STS-126 (2008)

HURLEY, Douglas Gerald, 44, USMC, NASA pilot, second mission Previous mission: STS-127 (2009)

MAGNUS, Sandra Hall, 46, civilian, NASA mission specialist 1, third mission Previous missions: STS-112 (2002), STS-126/ISS-18/119 (2008/2009) WALHEIM, Rex Joseph, 48, USAF (Retd.), NASA mission specialist 2, third mission

Previous missions: STS-110 (2002), STS-122 (2008)

Flight log

The finale of the 30 yr Space Shuttle program came in July 2011 with the flight of STS-135. This was a mission added to the manifest to utilize the remaining avail­able hardware and was a final opportunity to stock up the station and remove a quantity of unwanted material and trash before finally retiring the fleet.

When Ken Ham and the rest of the STS-132 crew returned in May 2010, discussions were already under way over the possibility of flying one more Atlantis mission. In light of this, Ham called his recent mission “the first last flight of Atlantis” and so it proved. The orbiter had one processing cycle to go through, as rescue orbiter for STS-134—the “first” last Shuttle flight—but once the new flight had been authorized, this became the final processing cycle as, following the STS – 134 mission, the vehicle was processed for STS-135.

Towards the end of 2010, it had become more likely that the mission would indeed fly once the funding had been organized, and by January 2011 the mission was included in the internal flight roster for planning purposes. In February,

NASA management was told that the mission would fly even if adequate funds were not found, but the budget for the mission was authorized in April after saving funds in other areas. By that time, preparations for the mission were well on the way towards completion anyway.

For the final time, the Shuttle ground processing team geared up for a launch. The stacking of the SRBs began towards the end of March 2011, with the ET being attached on April 25. Atlantis was rolled from the OPF across to the YAB on May 16, and by May 18 the stack was completed. The rollout to the pad occurred on the night of May 31/June 1, with the Rafaello MPLM being installed in the payload bay of Atlantis on June 20. The manifest also included a significant number of commemorative items and the U. S. flag that had flown on STS-1, along with a special 9/11 flag. With everything ready for a planned July 8 launch, the July 4 Independence Day weekend was kept free to allow for some extra processing margin. All eyes looked at the weather, which appeared to be the only concern (as it had been so many times) but when NASA affirmed the July 8 launch date, even nature cooperated to see the Shuttle program off in fine style.

Designated ULF-7, the payload included the Raffaello MPLM packed with over 9,0001b (4082.4 kg) of supplies and the Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) experiment. This was an experiment to demonstrate and test the tools, techniques, and technologies required to develop a robotic satellite-refueling capability, even though the target vehicle might not be designed to be refueled. The astronauts were also to return a failed ammonia pump for evaluation by engineers prior to refurbishment for relaunch at some future date.

After an incident-free launch and ascent to orbit, the crew prepared for the ISS docking by checking the vehicle, inspecting the TPS, and setting up the rendezvous tools and EMUs. Throughout the mission, the crew received well wishes from family, friends, fellow workers, and the general public as the final Shuttle flight continued. Docking with the station occurred on July 10, with the prime ISS resident crew tolling the ship’s bell for an incoming spacecraft one final time for a Shuttle orbiter. One hour and 40 minutes after docking, the hatches were opened and the two crews welcomed each other, followed by the mandatory safety briefings and status updates. The only EVA during the mission would be conducted by the station crew from Quest.

Work began almost immediately, with the RMS used to relocate the 50 ft (80.45 m) external boom to Canadarm2 for the inspection of the Shuttle Thermal Protection System. As the boom was now permanently part of the station, this inspection could not be completed by the crew the day after launch. On July 11, the Raffaello module was transferred to the Harmony Node in a 30 min operation. The supplies included 2,6771b (1,214.28 kg) of food, enough for a full year for the station crews. The crew relocated some of the cargo from Raffaello into PMA-3, with the supplies packed in 17 different racks inside the pressurized logistics module. These included eight Resupply Stowage Platforms (RSP), two Inter­mediate Stowage Platforms (ISP), six Resupply Stowage Racks (RSR), and one Zero Stowage Rack. An additional 2,2281b (1,010.62 kg) of cargo was stowed on the middeck of Atlantis which also had to be transferred to the station. Sandra Magnus was loadmaster over a planned 130 hours of unloading time during the docked phase. Once empty, the module would be refilled with 5,6661b (2,570.09 kg) of equipment no longer needed on the station, plus discontinued logistics and trash. After an evaluation of available consumables, an extra day was added to the mission to give the crew additional time to relocate all the cargo and supplies between the vehicles.

The EVA from the Quest airlock was performed by ISS astronauts Fossum and Garan on July 12. It lasted 6 hours 3 minutes. The reason for the station crew performing the EVA was essentially one of time and experience. Confirma­tion that STS-135 would actually launch came late in the cycle, so the training of the crew focused mainly on getting to and from the station and handling the massive cargo transfer. Contingency EVA training was included, but as the astro­nauts were all Shuttle veterans this made the compressed training cycle much easier to accomplish. The two station resident astronauts, Garan and Fossum, had logged nine previous EVAs between them, three of which were performed together during STS-124 in 2008, so they were used to working together as a team. It was also possible that with so many supplies being delivered, the weight saved from flying no more than four crew members could be reallocated to the logistics manifest.

The objective of this EVA was to retrieve a faulty 1,4001b (635.04 kg) ammonia pump module which had failed in 2010 and had been stowed in the

External Storage Module 2 during STS-133 earlier in the year. The two ISS astronauts relocated it to the cargo bay of Atlantis to be returned and refurbished as a spare unit. They also set up the RRM experiment on an external pallet and released a stuck latch on the Data Grapple Fixture at the front of Zarya. This would extend the operating envelope of Canadarm2 across to the Russian segment to support robotics work. A further material experiment was also deployed from a carrier located on the station’s truss. This was the eighth such experiment, with this one focused upon optical reflection materials. Originally attached during STS-134, it had not been deployed due to concerns from outgassing from the AMS unit. Finally, to close out the EVA, insulation was installed on the end of the Tranquility PM A in an area that was exposed to the effects of sunlight.

Throughout the mission, the Shuttle crew received a number of special wake-up calls in celebration of the end of the program. On July 11, much was made in reports of an “all American meal” which featured grilled chicken, corn, baked beans, cheese, and the traditional apple pie. This was also reported on the NASA website. The meal was originally planned for July 4, but the launch delays postponed it for a week.

On July 15, almost at the end of the 30 yr Shuttle program, U. S. President Barack Obama called Atlantis, wishing them well on their mission. The crew later solved a problem with the fourth general purpose computer on Atlantis, which required it to be rebooted to get it up and running again. Later, the EVA suits were reconfigured in order to leave them behind on the station. As the checklist of tasks remaining shortened, so the four Shuttle astronauts supported the station crew in relocating some of the cargo they had delivered to ease the post-docking workload for the resident crew as much as they could. The Shuttle crew also repaired a broken access door to the Shuttle air revitalization system, where the lithium hydroxide canisters that purified the air inside the orbiter were exchanged. On July 16, the 42nd anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, Ferguson formally presented the station crew with the historic U. S. flag that had flown aboard Columbia on STS-1 30 years before. This flag will remain on board the space station until the next crew launched from the soil of the United States arrives at the orbiting facility to return it to Earth once again.

Hatches between the two spacecraft were closed for the final time on July 18 after 7 days 21 hours and 41 minutes. The next day, after a few hours’ sleep on board Atlantis, the crew undocked from the station after 8 days 15 hours and 21 minutes of being attached to the orbital facility, ending a period of Space Shuttle station dockings that had begun 16 years before, with the flight of STS-71 to Mir in 1995. Safely undocked, the crew backed the orbiter away for the formal fly-around maneuver to photo-document the exterior of the station. The station was yawed 90 degrees for an optimum view during the 27 min photo opportunity, which captured never-before-seen views of the longitudinal axis of the station from the Shuttle. With this completed, it was time to fire the separation engines and depart from the vicinity of the station to begin final preparations for the flight home.

On the day before landing (July 20), the crew performed the traditional pre-landing checks of the Thermal Protection System, Flight Control Systems, and RCS engines for the final time on a Shuttle mission. The last science objectives of the program were completed with the deployment of the PicoSat technology demonstration satellite from a small canister in the payload bay and an onboard experiment on osmosis was also conducted by the crew. On July 21, to the wake – up call of God Bless America by Kate Smith, there was a tribute to all those who had been involved in the program since its inception over 40 years ago. Even the weather was cooperating, helping to celebrate the end of an era of American manned space flight in fine style as Atlantis swooped to a perfect pre-dawn landing at the Cape.

By the end of its last mission, Atlantis had traveled 125,935,769 million miles (20,263,063 km) over 33 missions, logging over 307 days in space, and completing 4,848 orbits of Earth. When the crew disembarked, there remained only the period of decommissioning after the mission and then a program of preparations for shipping the Atlantis to its new museum home. But before the vehicle had cooled down from its fiery reentry, the celebrations and emotional recollections had begun. For commander Ferguson, the realization that the Shuttle program was over came when the wheels stopped on the runway and the vehicle was powered down. In the pre-dawn darkness the displays went blank and the vehicle fell silent, creating a “rush of emotion” for the commander.

The Shuttle program had created many milestones and memories over 30 years, but never again would an orbiter of that design venture into space. Its work was done and it was time to move aside for new generations of human spacecraft to write the next pages in space history. The Shuttle era was finally over.

Milestones

284th world manned space flight 165th U. S. manned space flight 37th and final Shuttle ISS mission 135th Shuttle flight 33rd and final Atlantis flight 12th Atlantis ISS flight Final Shuttle flight of program

First four-person Shuttle crew since STS-6 in April 1983

Whichever new vehicle design is finally chosen to return American astronauts to space from U. S. launch sites it will need to support programs not only in various types of Earth orbit, but also those planned for journeys far beyond our planet, using far more advanced spacecraft to make the actual journeys. There are a range of options available for future space planners and explorers to aim for.

Low (and other) Earth orhit operations

The ISS will continue to be at the forefront of Earth orbital operations for the remainder of this decade, barring any unforeseen major technical problem or emergency situation. Of course, ISS operations also depend upon adequate funding and continued cooperation between the partners, but hopefully we will see possibly 60 resident crews complete their missions and observations on board the ISS by the 20th anniversary of the permanent manning of the complex. It will also require confidence in the ability of the station to continue to support future crews safely and perform its scientific functions properly if operations are to continue into the 2020s. Studies are currently being conducted in order to qualify the main hardware to support ISS operations into 2028, making it a full 30 years since construction began. The work conducted on board the station over the next 15 years or so will presumably be aimed at supporting plans for whatever follows the ISS in low Earth orbit and for missions beyond our planet.

The question of what follows the ISS is an interesting one, as there are no firm plans or suggestions for a follow-on ISS. So can the ISS remain operational and useful for another 20 years without major issues surfacing? It seems doubtful, as there are already signs that the crews’ time is being taken up as much by main­tenance, repair, and housekeeping as with pure science research. It is also difficult to imagine the complex supporting more than a crew of six, or perhaps nine without additional resources added. Of course, increasing crew numbers will add to the challenge, as more people means more power, further supplies, and logistics, requiring more investment probably for limited extra returns. Then there is the question of added waste and unwanted materials to dispose of. All of this would require further spacecraft to support expanded operations, thus increasing the operating costs.

Merely adding crew members to work on more activities does not really solve the problem, unless the working environment can be made less reliant on crew input for keeping the vehicle operating. If this were possible, then more time would be available for the crews to perform science or research, but this is probably a step beyond the current and potential capabilities of the station. It would be more likely to be included in next-generation vehicles, especially those intended for deep-space operations (see below).

It will be interesting to witness the development of new manned space vehicles, such as Orion, as they are tested in low Earth orbit. Their level of auto­mated or manual operations, and the amount of crew input required for the tasks assigned will also be critical for their success. With advances in robotics and joint operations with automated space vehicles, the argument for involving the full par­ticipation of a human crew will be something of a challenge. Even in Earth orbit, a blend of human and automated space operations is useful. Robots can venture where it is dangerous for humans to go, while humans can be on hand to offer rational decision-making choices, repair, and servicing skills to a degree not found on fully automated machines. And can humans ever truly give up the need to explore and “be there”? Looking at Mars through the eyes of a rover may be thrilling in its own way, but it cannot possibly compare with taking those first steps ourselves.

As for other nations’ involvement in human space flight operations, perhaps a truly international program is the way forward, expanding upon the success of the ISS. China is expected to develop its space station program for the rest of this decade and create a viable infrastructure for bolder ventures farther away from Earth. India has also expressed a desire to place its own citizens in orbit, though recent reports have indicated that the supporting technologies required for such a large commitment are not as advanced as originally thought. The first manned domestic Indian flight is still some years in the future, possibly not before 2020. It is also important not to totally ignore comments from Russia about their desire to rekindle their purely national manned space program, though this will of course depend upon sufficient funding commitments.

Another branch of manned operations in Earth orbit are the commercial program, both suborbital and orbital. The forthcoming Virgin Galactic flights in SpaceShipTwo are expected to increase the popularity of short flights to the fringes of space, but not yet into orbit. Since 2009 space tourist flights to the ISS have been suspended due to the increased size of crews on the station, but could be resumed sometime in the near future if hardware and funding become available and the international partners agree to support them. At the time of writing this does not seem likely before 2015 or 2016. Commercially operated space stations are often discussed and the endorsement of privately developed launch and landing systems for ISS support operations are but a step away from developing commercial orbital space operations, perhaps with further moves toward orbital tourist flights.

The idea of factories, large power platforms, and five-star hotels in space may still be a dream of science fiction, but the time will be right when those ideas come to the forefront of space flight, as we are now seeing with commercial launching agreements. One area which will probably be eagerly fought over will be space salvage, the recovery or repair operations to clear up abandoned or failed satellites, opening up the location to new and updated spacecraft. Exciting devel-

opments in low Earth orbit await future space explorers and investors. The head­line glory may come from venturing outwards, but the long-term investment in Earth orbital infrastructure will allow us to look after our own planet, utilizing the huge investments in space exploration to date to improve the quality of life here on the ground.

There are, of course other types of orbits around our planet yet to be investigated by human crews. Often spoken about in tales of science fiction or yet – to-be-achieved space plans these include polar, synchronous, and geostationary orbits and are primary candidates for human expansion in the future.

There is not the scope to provide a detailed analysis in this present volume but for the benefit of understanding the more recent space flights, a brief overview of our steps to space is presented here (see the first three chapters in Praxis Manned Spaceflight Log 1961-2006, Springer Praxis 2007 for additional details). For every flight into space there has to be the journey from the surface of our planet, through our atmosphere, and into the vacuum beyond, at all times increasing in velocity to overcome the pull of gravity which keeps us on the planet in the first place. As humans, space is not our natural environment and it takes an enormous effort to get us there, sustain us while we explore, and then protect us to get safely home again. Of course, the farther we explore from our planet, the more support we will need and the more difficult the return to Earth becomes. Learning to sustain ourselves in space has always been a challenge, from the first flights of a few minutes or hours to the current months spent on board the space station.

Though each space flight is unique in its content, the profile for its preparation and execution is essentially the same: A mission is identified and assigned its objectives; a flight plan is created and the hardware prepared; the flight crew is selected and trained; then eventually the vehicle is launched, flies its mission, and then returns to Earth. All this is then followed by evaluations of the crew, research, and mission performance and examination of returned hardware in prep­aration for the next mission. This is a basic overview but it stands true for all successful missions flown to date, regardless of the country of origin, or mission objectives.

While this may be the plan, it does not always turn out that way. Human space flight is a high-performance, high-risk endeavor, which will always carry an element of danger for the mission, hardware, and crew. It has been demonstrated several times that accidents can occur during any of the stages of a mission, from training to recovery. For each of these potential risk areas, safety features, systems, and procedures were built in to help protect or possibly rescue a crew.

Some of these were introduced or modified for use on future flights only after an emergency had occurred during a previous mission.

Each crew is trained in emergency or contingency procedures and is provided with medical kits, escape equipment, and alternative flight plans to help deal with olf-nominal stations. Mission planners develop alternate mission profiles to gain at least something from the mission should the primary objective have to be aban­doned or curtailed, but this has to be done with crew safety in mind at all times. Though mission success is at the forefront of each crew in their execution of their flight, crew safety is the overriding factor and the primary responsibility of the mission commander. As much as each crew member would want to perform to the maximum and contribute as much as they could as a team member, they all have homes and families to return to. The expectation, excitement, and personal rewards of flying in space run strong in each crew member, but never as strongly as the desire to come home safely. Accepting the risk is part of being a space explorer, but these are not foolhardy individuals willing to risk their own fives or threaten the safety of others.

Across the globe in the Soviet Union, the cosmonauts remained focused upon crewing a series of Salyut (or Almaz) space stations, flying to and from the station in Soyuz. From 1978, the mission durations began to increase markedly, supported by the regular resupply flights of Progress vehicles. These “space freighters” delivered fresh supplies of fuel, air, water, food, equipment, and other small items of hardware. Once emptied by the crew, they could be filled with trash and unwanted material for a destructive burn-up in the atmosphere, thus freeing up valuable room on board the station.

During the Salyut missions, each two-man crew had their hands full completing all the assigned science objectives while maintaining the onboard systems and keeping the facility clean and habitable. Generally, the crewing on most missions included a military pilot cosmonaut as commander and either a design bureau flight engineer on the civilian Salyut or a military engineer on the Almaz missions. There were very few equivalent scientist astronauts in the cosmo­naut team and those who were selected, even with medical background, had little opportunity to fly on a mission. When the new variant Soyuz (Soyuz T) was intro­duced, it was once again possible to plan three-person crewing on the stations. However, when a third seat was available, it was normally filled by a second engineer from a design bureau (mostly from OKB-1, the Korolev design bureau), guest cosmonauts, or physician-cosmonauts.

From 1978, a change occurred for the visiting missions to a Salyut. The first civilian cosmonaut commanders (again from OKB-1) were accompanied by a representative from the East European/Interkosmos countries for short, week-long missions. The Interkosmos cosmonauts were certainly not of the “mission special­ist” class, and were mostly military officers who were given a short course of space training for a one-flight opportunity, mainly for political-propaganda reasons (and to install foreign equipment on the Salyut). Essentially it was a Soviet way of combining the roles of the Shuttle payload specialists and manned space flight engineers that would soon be seen on the Shuttle. The Interkosmos program evolved into a series of commercial agreements with other countries, which flew in the 1980s on Salyut 7 and Mir and later developed into the so-called “tourist flights” of “space flight participants” seen on the ISS in recent years.

In September 1977, the Soviets launched the second-generation Salyut 6 station, of which much was expected. Reports indicated that the first Soyuz mission to the station would be, in part, a proud celebration of the 20th anniver­sary of Sputnik 1. So when Soyuz 25 failed to dock successfully, it came as a bitter blow and cast a shadow over the all-rookie crew. Though they were later exonerated of all blame, the die was cast and significant changes were imple­mented for future crewing policy. By October 1977 there had been 14 Soyuz manned dockings attempted with either another Soyuz or a Salyut/Almaz station since October 1968. Six of these had failed. As a direct result of the Soyuz 25 failure, it was decided that no all-rookie crew would be flown again, especially not for such an important, high-profile mission. Eventually, the criteria were relaxed, but it would be another 17 years before the next all-rookie Russian Soyuz crew would launch (Soyuz TM-19 in April 1994 with Yuri Malenchenko and Talgat Musabayev aboard).

One of the problems was that there was no leeway in the docking attempt. The stripped-down battery version of Soyuz, used on Salyut station missions since 1974, had a limited independent orbital life of just two days, barely enough to get to and from the station in the first place. Unlike Apollo 14, which took six attempts to extract the LM from the top of the S-IVB stage en route to the Moon, repeated attempts at docking for the Soyuz were out of the question. It was an expensive lesson to learn, from the point of view of wasted resources and hardware. Improvements made for the Soyuz T helped to resolve the orbital flexibility of the spacecraft, but not before another failed docking had occurred in 1979 due to a malfunctioning main engine on the Soyuz.

When the missions to the stations were successful, it added to an ever growing database of long-duration information that would enable the Soviets/ Russians to develop their space station operations with greater confidence. Round-the-clock ground support for months on end; experiences of small crews working together in restricted confines of the orbital laboratory; masses of biome­dical information and psychological data (including the stresses of command, work over long periods of orbital flight, and the difficult decision of whether to tell a crewman in flight of a family bereavement or major incident back home). All of this was essential information to the growing program and those missions yet to come.

There were also plenty of challenges to overcome and learn from. The Soviet stations were limited in air-to-ground communications coverage, due to the lack of a global tracking network. Maintenance and housekeeping chores increased as the stations got older, making it difficult to strike a balance with important and often time-critical research objectives. From Salyut 6, there was the added dimension of disruptions to the routine from visiting crews, both at arrival and after departure. Operationally, the program had to learn about the challenges (and consequences) of docking more than one spacecraft to the station core module at the same time and the dynamic stresses on the whole structure this entailed. Postflight recovery techniques and protocols following such long missions also had to be improved—valuable lessons for even longer expeditions that were already being planned.

Salyut operations during the 1970s were also evolving the cosmonaut mission training cycle. For the Yostok missions, the Soviets had created a small training

group of cosmonauts taken from the larger corps, from which they would select the prime and reserve crews. This method had been successful and continued into the Salyut program. This experience, of having several crews going through the preparation cycle for assignment as reserve, backup, or prime crew, would prove highly successful and flexible. Separate training groups were formed for visiting crews, or to evaluate new versions of the Soyuz. These experiences would be adopted over 20 years later as the International Space Station evolved—a lasting tribute to the Soviet crewing policy devised in the Gagarin era.

2007-008A April 7, 2007

Pad 1, Site 5, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of

Kazakhstan

October 21, 2007

10 km from the settlement of Tolybai, Republic of Kazakhstan

Soyuz-FG (serial number Ц15000-019),

Soyuz TMA (serial number 220)

196 da 17 h 04 min 35 s (Yurchikhin, Kotov)

13 da 18 h 59 min 50 s (Simonyi down on TMA-9) Pulsar

ISS resident crew transport (14S), ISS-15 resident crew program, visiting crew 12 program

Flight Crew

YURCHIKHIN, Fyodor Nikolayevich, 48, civilian, RSA ISS commander, Soyuz TMA flight engineer, second mission Previous mission: STS-112 (2002)

KOTOV, Oleg Valerievich, 41, Russian Federation Air Force, RSA ISS flight engineer 1, Soyuz TMA commander

SIMONYI, Charles, 58, U. S.A., space flight participant, visiting crew 12 ISS-15 Shuttle-delivered crew members

WILLIAMS, Sunita Lyn, 41, USN, NASA ISS flight engineer 2 (up on STS-116, down on STS-117)

ANDERSON, Clayton Conrad, 48, civihan, NASA ISS flight engineer 2 (up on STS-117, down on STS-120)

Flight log

The 15th ISS resident crew launched along with the 12th visiting crew member, Charles Simonyi, aboard the Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft. Two days later the Soyuz, under the command of rookie cosmonaut and medical doctor Oleg Kotov, docked with the Zarya FGB module. The commander of the expedition, Fyodor Yurchikhin (call sign Olympus), had previously visited the station five years before as a member of the American STS-112 mission and fulfilled the role of flight engineer for the Soyuz flight to and from the station. Kotov served as flight engineer 1 for the duration of the expedition, resuming the command of the Soyuz for the return home. Formal handover to the ISS-15 crew took place on April 17.

Two American (NASA) astronauts would complete the resident crew complement. Sunita Williams was already on board the station having arrived on STS-116 (12A.1) and having worked as part of the ISS-14 crew. She would continue with the ISS-15 crew before returning on STS-117 (13A) in the spring. Aboard that flight was her replacement, Clayton Anderson, who was to continue with the ISS-15 crew and then transfer over to the ISS-16 expedition before his own return to Earth on STS-120 later in 2007. This was the second in a series of resident crew exchanges via the Space Shuttle over the next three years. Both NASA astronauts were assigned to the MS5 position for ascent and descent on the Shuttle, transferring to the station’s resident crew in the ISS FE2 role.

The third TMA-10 crew member was space flight participant and naturalized U. S. citizen, Charles Simonyi, one of the founders of the Microsoft Corporation, who had developed Word and Excel computer software. Simonyi, who had been bom in Hungary, became the fifth space tourist and completed the longest stay on the ISS by a tourist up to that point. The duration of his visit had been decided upon by the requirement to land TMA-9 in Kazakhstan before sunset. During his time aboard the station, as the two main crews completed a series of handover activities, Simonyi completed a program of experiments that included a number of ESA life science experiments. He also wrote a log (which was not posted on his website until well after his return) and narrated video tours of the station. He landed with Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin in Kazakhstan aboard TMA-9 on April 21.

During the ISS-15 expedition, 272 sessions of 47 Russian experiments were planned, 43 of which were continuations of previous increments. The expedition also continued the program of experiments in the U. S. segment, totaling over 119 hours of planned operations. The ISS-15 increment received visits from three Shuttle crews: STS-117 (13A), STS-118 (13A.1), and STS-120 (10A). They also worked with the unmanned resupply vehicles Progress M-59, M-60, and M-61. In addition to their scientific activities and logistics transfers, the main crew com­pleted a wide range of maintenance, repair, and housekeeping duties throughout their stay on the station.

On April 16, during the handover activities, Sunita Williams became the first person to run a marathon while participating in a space flight. Using the TVIS treadmill she “ran” 26.2 miles (42.16 km) as competitor 14,000 of the Boston Marathon in 4 hours 24 minutes. Ten days later, Williams was told she would return on STS-117 instead of the original STS-118, which had slipped in its launch cycle due to the hail damage and З-month delay to STS-117. That mission arrived on June 10, carrying her replacement, Clayton Anderson. Sunita Williams returned on Atlantis after a mission of just under 195 days, surpassing the female space endurance record held by Shannon Lucid for the previous 11 years.

The ISS-15 residency would include three space walks totaling 18 hours 43 minutes: one from the U. S. segment and two from the Russian segment. Yurchikhin participated in all three excursions and was accompanied by Kotov on the first two space walks from the Pirs module at the Russian segment and by Anderson from the U. S. Quest module for the third.

The first EVA (May 30, 5h 25 min) involved attaching further debris shields around the Zvezda module and rerouting a high-frequency cable for a Russian GPS system. The second EVA (June 6, 5h 37 min) featured the installation of the Biorisk samples exposure experiment, which would be retrieved on a later EVA. More cables and debris panels were also installed. The third EVA (July 23, 7h 41 min) featured the removal and jettison by hand of two large structures: the VSSA Flight Support Equipment and the Early Ammonia Servicer.

On September 27, TMA-10 was relocated from the nadir port on Zarya to the aft port of Zvezda in an operation that took less than 28 minutes, clearing the Zarya port for other spacecraft operations.

Yurchikhin and Kotov handed over formal command of the station on October 19 to the recently arrived ISS-16 crew, before returning to Earth aboard the TMA-10 spacecraft on October 21 2007.

During the descent, the landing computer in the Descent Module of the Soyuz switched unexpectedly to a ballistic return trajectory, which would result in a landing short of the planned recovery zone. Though not in increased danger, the crew did have to endure g-loads about 2g higher than the nominal 5g (up to 7g max) and undershot the landing zone by about 340 km. This was similar to the reentry flown during TMA-1 on May 4, 2003.

Yurchikhin and Kotov landed with VC-13 Malaysian space flight participant Sheik Muszaphar Shukor A1 Masrie, who had arrived with the ISS-16 crew aboard Soyuz TMA-11. The landing of TMA-10 took place just 10 km from the settlement of Tolybai, Republic of Kazakhstan.

Milestones

252nd manned space flight 103 rd Russian manned space flight 96th manned Soyuz flight 10th manned Soyuz TMA mission 14th ISS Soyuz mission (14S)

12th ISS Soyuz visiting mission Kotov became Russia’s 100th cosmonaut Williams (April 16) “ran” the first marathon while in space

Flight crew

STURCKOW, Richard Frederick Wilford, 47, USMC, NASA commander, third mission

Previous missions-. STS-88 (1998), STS-105 (2001)

ARCHAMBAULT, Lee Joseph, 46, USAF, NASA pilot FORRESTER, Patrick Graham, 50, civilian, NASA mission specialist 1 SWANSON, Steven Roy, 46, civilian, NASA mission specialist 2 OLIVAS, John Daniel, 41, civilian, NASA mission specialist 3 REILLY II, James Francis, 53, civilian, NASA mission specialist 4, third mission

Previous missions: STS-89 (1998), STS-104 (2001)

ISS-15 crew member up only

ANDERSON, Clayton Conrad, 48, NASA mission specialist 5 and ISS-15 flight engineer 2

ISS-15 crew member down only

WILLIAMS, Sunita Lyn, 41, NASA mission specialist 5 and ISS-15 flight engineer 2

Flight log

This mission was manifested to deliver the S3/4 truss assembly and to exchange NASA resident station crew members Clayton Anderson and Sunita Williams.

Atlantis had arrived back at the Orbital Processing Facility on September 21, 2006 following the STS-115 mission. Processing for its next flight continued in the OPF until the orbiter was moved over to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)

for mating with the rest of the stack. The rollout to launchpad 39A occurred on February 15. However, on February 26, the thermal protection on both the orbiter and the External Tank suffered damage from hail. This was so severe that repairs could not be conducted on the pad. Atlantis had to be rolled back to the YAB on March 4 to complete the repairs and was returned to pad 39A until May 15.

The remainder of the processing and countdown proceeded as planned, with an on-time launch on June 8, 2007 and the 8 min ascent to orbit going according to plan. Initial orbit inspection of the left Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) later that day revealed that part of the thermal protection system appeared to have pulled away from adjacent thermal tiles. The crew used the RMS for a closer inspection. The following day, Archambault (assisted by Forrester and Swanson) used the RMS with the boom-mounted extension system to inspect both the heat shield on the leading edge of the orbiter wing and the vehicle’s nose cap.

Atlantis docked with the ISS at the PMA-2 port of the Destiny Laboratory on June 10. Following the traditional greeting between the Shuttle and station crews after hatch opening, the exchange between Anderson and Williams took place. Anderson became the new flight engineer on the ISS-15 resident crew, while Williams became a member of the STS-117 crew. The formal exchange included swapping the form-fitting Soyuz seat liners, which marked the point at which the two astronauts changed crews.

During the docked phase, four EYAs were completed by the Shuttle EVA crew from the Quest airlock, working in alternate teams of two. The initial EVA (6h 15 min on June 11) by Reilly and Olivas focused upon completing the attach­ment of bolts, cables, and connectors to the S3/4 truss segment and preparing for the deployment of its solar arrays. The EVA had been delayed for an hour after the ISS had temporarily lost its altitude control. This was not entirely unexpected because the movement of the 17.8-ton mass of the S3/4 truss (equivalent to the size of a bus) skewed the symmetry of the station, causing the control moment gyro to go offline.

The second EVA (June 13) was conducted by Forrester and Swanson in 7 hours 16 minutes. The previous day, station controllers had unfurled the solar arrays on the recently attached truss to soak up the Sun’s energy. The main task of this second EVA was to remove all of the launch locks which held the 3.4m wide solar alpha rotary joint in place. During the EVA, the crew ran into difficulty when Forrester found that commands intended for a drive lock assembly they were installing were in fact being sent to a drive lock assembly installed during the first EVA. As a result, ground controllers checked and confirmed the safe config­uration of the earlier installed assembly. The two astronauts also assisted with the retraction of an older solar array, which cleared the way to deploy the new array. A total of 13 of the 315 solar array bays were folded.

On June 15, Olivas and Reilly completed the third EVA of the mission, totaling 7 hours 58 minutes. During this EVA, they assisted with the retraction of the P6 truss, which required 28 commands over 45 minutes to complete the opera­tion. The two astronauts also addressed separate tasks. Olivas spent 2 hours stapling and pinning down a thermal blanket on the orbiter’s OMS pod, after a 10 x 25.5 cm comer had peeled up during ascent. Meanwhile, Reilly installed the hydrogen vent valve of a new oxygen generation system on the U. S. laboratory, Destiny.

Two days later (June 17), Forrester and Swanson ventured outside for the fourth and final EVA of this mission. During this 6h 29 min EVA, the two men relocated a TV camera from a stowage platform on the Quest airlock to a new position on the S3 truss. They also verified the drive lock assembly #2 configura­tions, as well as removing the final six solar alpha rotary joint launch restraints. After clearing a path for the Mobile Base System (MBS) on the S3 truss, several get-ahead tasks were completed. The two astronauts installed a computer network cable on the Unity node, opened the hydrogen vent valve on Destiny, and tethered two orbital debris shield panels on the Zvezda Service Module. Activation of the rotary joint meant there were now four U. S. solar arrays tracking the Sun during each orbit, providing much needed additional power for station operations.

Over the four EVAs, the astronauts logged 27 hours 58 minutes in total. Reilly and Olivas logged 14 hours 13 minutes on the first and third EVAs, while Forrester and Swanson accumulated 13 hours 45 minutes during EVAs 2 and 4.

During the docked phase of the mission, the Shuttle’s propulsion system was used to back up the station’s control and orbital attitude adjustment after the Russian segment computers which normally handle this task experienced prob­lems. Both Russian and U. S. teams on the ground worked on the problem, trou­bleshooting and then restoring the capabilities of the computer. On June 15, cosmonauts Yurchikhin and Kotov managed to get two of the three lines to each computer running after they bypassed an apparent faulty power switch with external cabling. This modification was repeated on the final two channels. Three days later the Russians demonstrated the ability to maintain station control using the computers, thus allowing Atlantis to depart.

After transferring 19 tons of food, water, and equipment across to the station, and now with Sunita Williams aboard, Atlantis undocked on June 19. Joint activ­ities had logged 8 days 19 hours 6 minutes. Piloted by Archambault, Atlantis completed a fly-around of the station, offering a good inspection and photo­documentation opportunity of the reconfigured outpost. At a distance of74 km from the station, the Atlantis crew then used the RMS and boom sensor system to inspect the orbiter’s thermal protection system on both wing leading edges and the nose cap.

Three days later, after a 24 h delay due to adverse weather, Atlantis arrived safely on runway 21 at Edwards Air Force Base in California, after marginal weather had again prevented a landing at the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Cape in Florida. Setting a new record for female space flight endurance, Sunita Williams logged just short of 195 days in space during her residency.

The transfer of Atlantis back to the Cape did not begin immediately. After several days of preparation, the orbiter was bolted to the top of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (Boeing 747). Following several fuel stops and weather delays, the combination finally arrived back at the Cape on July 3.

Milestones

253rd manned space flight 148th U. S. manned space flight 118th Shuttle mission 28th flight of Atlantis 21st Shuttle TSS mission

Heaviest station payload carried by Shuttle to date (42,671 lb) (19,355.5 kg) First launch from Pad 39A since STS-107 Columbia in January 2003 Suni Williams set a new endurance record of 195 days for the longest single space flight by a female, surpassing the 188-day record of Shannon Lucid set in 1996

Flight Crew

KELLY, Scott Joseph, 43, USN, NASA commander, second mission Previous mission: STS-103 (1999)

HOBAUGH, Charles Owen, 45, USMC, NASA pilot, second mission Previous mission: STS-104 (2001)

CALDWELL, Tracy Ellen, 37, civilian, NASA mission speciahst 1 MASTRACCHIO, Richard Alan, civilian, NASA mission specialist 2, second mission

Previous mission: STS-106 (2000)

WILLIAMS, Daffyd (David) Rhys, 53, civilian (Canadian), CSA mission specialist 3, second mission Previous mission: STS-90 (1998)

MORGAN, Barbara Radding, 55, civihan, NASA mission specialist 4 DREW, Benjamin Alvin, 44, USAF, NASA mission speciahst 5

Flight log

This mission continued the installation of the solar array truss segment and also featured the flight of the first educator astronaut—a teacher turned astronaut.

As a result of a major modification program for Endeavour, and the recovery from the loss of Columbia, launch preparations took some time. The orbiter had arrived at the OPF on December 7, 2002 following the landing of STS-113. Endeavour remained at the Cape for the next four years, being moved between facilities as required for both mission processing and upgrades. During the modifi­cation period, Endeavour, the newest of the orbiter fleet, received a number of upgrades including the installation of a “glass cockpit”, a global positioning system to be used as an aid for landing and the Station-to-Shuttle Power Transfer

System (SSTPS). This would enable the orbiter to draw power from the station while docked with it, extending the time it could remain at the station.

On January 9, 2004 Endeavour was moved to the VAB for maintenance, returning to the OPF Bay 2 on January 21. On December 16 that year Endeavour was moved to High Bay 4 in the VAB for storage. Then, on January 12, 2005, the orbiter was relocated back to OPF Bay 2 once again. The move to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) hangar on February 22 was to make room to conduct planned modifications to the OPF. Endeavour returned to the Processing Facility on March 18, where it remained for the next two years. Following mission proces­sing for STS-118, Endeavour was rolled over to the VAB on July 2, 2007 for mating to the External Tank (ET) and two SRBs. The STS-118 stack was rolled out to Pad 39A on July 11, 2007.

Despite some problems with a stubborn side hatch on the Endeavour, the mission launched on time, heading into the early evening sky just before sunset. On board was the crew of seven, the SS truss, the Spacehab module, and the External Storage Platform #3, which included a Control Moment Gyroscope (CMG) to replace a faulty one on the station. The following day, the crew used the Shuttle’s robotic arm and Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS) to take a close look at the vehicle’s heat shielding over the leading edge of the wings.

Shortly before docking with the station on August 10, commander Scott Kelly maneuvered Endeavour in a backflip, allowing the resident ISS crew to take digital photos of the underside of the vehicle and its upper surfaces to check the thermal protection system for possible damage. Subsequent analysis of this imagery revealed a 3" (8 cm) round dent on the starboard underside. Further inspection and analysis of the images and data showed that the damage had penetrated a tile down to the internal framework. Over several days, while the crew continued work on the station, the Mission Management Team (MMT) evaluated the evidence and authorized a further engineering analysis and series of tests. It was determined that direct tile repair by the crew on a contingency EVA was not required and that the damage would not pose a risk to the crew during reentry. It was therefore decided to leave the damaged tile alone until after landing. This decision revealed growing confidence in the changes introduced since the loss of Columbia, better capability in interpreting inspection imagery, and more understanding of the effects of minor damage on the TPS.

Endeavour docked to the station on August 10 while orbiting 214 miles (344.32 km) above the southern Pacific Ocean, northeast of Sydney, Australia. The MMT initially extended the flight to 14 days following a successful transfer of power from the station by means of the SSPTS. This enabled a fourth space walk to be added to the flight plan. However, later in the mission, with growing concern over the movement of Hurricane Dean towards the coast of Texas, the MMT decided to shorten the flight and end the mission one day early.

The mission’s four space walks logged 23 hours 13 minutes in total. Rick Mastracchio and Canadian astronaut Dave Williams each completed three EVAs, with ISS-16 flight engineer Clayton Anderson joining Mastracchio for the third EVA and Williams for the fourth and final EVA.

During the first EVA (August 11, 6h 17min) installation of the 2-ton, lift long spacer, Starboard 5 (S5) segment of the truss structure was completed. The astronauts also retracted the forward heat-rejecting radiator from the P6 truss assembly. This was planned for relocation to the end of the port truss during the following STS-120 mission. The mission’s second EVA (August 13, 6h 28 min), focused upon installation of the 6001b (272.16 kg) CMG onto the Z1 segment of the station truss assembly. The failed unit was removed and stored outside the station pending its planned return to Earth on a later mission.

During the third excursion (August 15, 5h 28 min), Anderson and Mastracchio relocated the S-band antenna subassembly from P6 to PI. They then installed a new transponder on PI as well as retrieving the P6 transponder. Mean­while, inside the station Pilot Charles Hobaugh and resident station flight engineer Oleg Kotov moved two CETA (Crew and Equipment Translation Aid) carts. It was during this EVA that Mastracchio noticed a hole in the thumb of his left pressure glove. As it was only through to the second of five layers it did not create a leak or endanger the astronaut. As a precaution, however, he returned to the airlock while Anderson completed the final tasks.

The fourth and final EVA of the mission (August 18, 5 h 2 min), conducted by Williams and Anderson, featured a number of lesser tasks, including installation of the External Wireless Instrumentation System (EWIS) antenna, installation of a stand for the temporary relocation of the Shuttle RMS extension boom, and retrieval of the two material experiment containers which were to be returned on Endeavour. The two other tasks planned for this EVA were deferred to a future space walk. These were relocating a toolbox to a more central location and cleaning up and securing the debris shielding. During each of the EVAs fellow crew members Caldwell and Morgan used the Shuttle and station RMS devices to move and locate the 7,0001b (3175.2 kg) number 3 external storage platform that would be installed on the P3 truss.

On August 11, the primary command and control computer in the U. S. segment shut down unexpectedly. Fortunately this shutdown did not affect the EVA being conducted that day. The redundancy in the system worked as designed, with the secondary computer taking over and the third computer providing a backup role. Ground controllers brought up the third computer after determining that an errant software command was the cause of the shut­down.

Mission specialist Barbara Morgan was a professional teacher turned astronaut, who had originally been chosen as a backup payload specialist to fellow teacher Christa McAuliffe in 1985 under the Teacher in Space Program. Tragically, McAuliffe died in the January 1986 Challenger accident. Morgan continued her association with NASA and returned to teaching, but in 1998 she was chosen as an educator mission specialist in the 17th NASA astronaut group. During STS-118, Morgan conducted three educational events and on several occa­sions she and her colleagues answered questions from children at the Discovery Center in Boise, Idaho and the Challenger Centers for Space Science Education in Alexandria, Virginia and Saskatchewan, Canada.

Endeavour undocked from the Station on August 19 after 8 days 17 hours 54 minutes of joint operations. Ironically, the expected threat from Hurricane Dean never materialized but by then the orbiter was committed to an early return— weather permitting. There was indeed fine weather as the landing took place on Runway 15 at the Shuttle Landing Facility at KSC on the first opportunity.

Milestones

254th manned space flight 149th U. S. manned space flight 119th Shuttle mission 20th flight of Endeavour 22nd Shuttle ISS mission

Morgan became the first educator mission specialist to fly in space The Zarya module completed its 50,000th orbit (August 14), as the oldest element of ISS

Installation of ESP3 using just the Space Station and Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) without help of EVA astronauts as on previous two installations

First use of the Station-Shuttle Power Transfer System Caldwell celebrates her 38 th birthday (August 14)

For centuries, humans dreamed of exploring the heavens above the blue sky, creating vivid stories of exploring the void amongst the stars. But the first hurdle was to devise a system for leaving the ground and surviving the adventure. Our atmosphere was the first barrier, together with the substantial hurdle of gravity. Understanding the “science” was beyond the early dreamers and planners. For centuries, observations of the night sky were based upon myth, religion, legend, belief, fear, and the imagination. One of the first “space sciences”, without actually being known as such, was the study of the stars, our Sun and Moon and the movement of the “heavenly bodies” we know as the planets. This was all grouped under what became known as “astrology” before serious scientific study of the cosmos became “astronomy”. Even today, we continue to use the same names for constellations and planets first derived in both “astrology” and “astronomy” by observers from ages past.

The early writers scribed stories of ascending to the heavens by means of woven baskets carried by flocks of geese, or wearing wings of feathers. Eventually, we began utilizing the new art of “balloons” to ascend though the atmosphere, hoping to reach as high as the Moon to visit the inhabitants thought to live there. As strange and weird as these writings are to the modern world, they can be inter­preted another way, in that these studies helped to discover new “sciences”. We began to study the atmosphere more closely, develop telescopes to look at the moon, planets, and stars, evaluate materials, and determine why it was so difficult to follow the ideas of dreamers and writers to reach the heavens. Gradually, the sciences refined these early dreams into the theories, principles, and under­standing we needed to develop the right method of reaching the stars—that of rocketry.

That method was first discovered by the ancient Chinese in the gunpowder projectiles used in conflict and celebrations. By the end of the 19th century, the theorists and dreamers had started realizing that the rocket would indeed be the best vehicle to explore the known vacuum of space and to get humans off the ground, to attain the required height and speed to circle the Earth and not fall

immediately back to the ground. The problem then was to create rockets capable of carrying not only instruments and biological samples, but the first humans beyond the atmosphere.

As the 20th century dawned, so did the understanding of the relatively new science of rocketry under the banner of “astronautics”. The huge developments that came over the relatively short period between 1900 and 1960 were amazing. True, rockets had been around for some time, but as weapons of war. Turning that effort towards the stars was, to a degree, another method of waging war, a strategic race to win the high ground. Scientific exploration was only a secondary consideration. But the “space race” brought the rocket that led us to orbit and we have not looked back since.

Though accidents and tragedy have occurred in preparations for space flight, the most likely accident scenarios occur during the mission itself, the first of which is the ascent from the launchpad into orbit. Sitting inside a spacecraft, strapped to thousands of gallons (or liters) of highly explosive fuel, the crew needs some assur­ance that if things go wrong there is at least a chance to get out, however unlikely the disaster or slim the chance of surviving it.

Crew escape systems varied with the design of each spacecraft. There were pad escape systems, incorporated into the launchpads to allow the crew either to vacate the pad inside the spacecraft or quickly exit the vehicle and clear the launch area. Slide wires and escape chutes were incorporated into the towers built for Apollo, Shuttle, and Buran, while escape from any potential explosion could be achieved by escape tower on Mercury, Apollo, Soyuz, and Shenzhou, or by ejection seats on Gemini. Each countdown process includes periods of evaluation built into the launch preparations as well as options to abort the launch before the critical time. Such safeguards continue to feature in the operational launch procedures of both Soyuz and Shenzhou.

During the Shuttle program, several launch attempts were abandoned due to the weather or over equipment concerns. Most of these were canceled long before the vehicle was committed to engine ignition. On five occasions, there was a “Redundant Set Launch Sequencer” (RSLS) abort called, which occurred between the ignition of the three main engines at 6.6 seconds before liftoff and the lighting of the solid rocket boosters at T — 0 seconds. If computers (not humans) sensed a problem in the main engines, the launch would be aborted, preventing the SRBs from igniting. The SRBs could not be turned off once ignited, thus committing the Shuttle to launch and at least 123 seconds of flight since no abort was possible prior to SRB separation, even if a main engine failed. Fortunately, the RSLS

system worked as designed on all five occasions (STS-41D in 1984, STS-51F in 1985, STS-55 in 1993, STS-51 also in 1993, and STS-68 in 1994).

Once a vehicle has left the pad, the options for escape from a pending explosion are more limited. There must at least be time to identify and react to the problem in the first place. Things happen rapidly in space flight and the journey from pad to orbit only takes eight to ten minutes. Events can occur in seconds, or even microseconds, so the technology has to be able to react quickly. Sometimes, there simply is no time to react and tragedy occurs.

The first manned spacecraft featured two methods of crew escape during launch. Vostok carried an ejection seat for its solo pilot, while Mercury incorpo­rated a launch escape tower. The tower idea was continued for Apollo and was later incorporated on Soyuz and, more recently, Shenzhou. One reason for this is simply that there was insufficient room or mass capacity to provide an ejection system for every crew member once the single-seat spacecraft were phased out. Ejection seats were retained for Gemini as it was thought more suit­able than an escape tower for that program. Like Vostok, these seats could be used for crew escape during recovery operations as well as for problems occurring during ascent.

For those programs using the escape tower, it was available for emergencies on the pad, but during ascent it was jettisoned at ballistic recovery altitude or once orbital speed was attained, which rendered the tower system unusable. For recovery, these spacecraft relied on parachutes (and, in the case of Soyuz and Shenzhou, the retro-rockets) to reduce the landing impact velocity.

These options were not available for Voskhod and Shuttle. For the amended Yostok, flying as Voskhod, crew escape was virtually impossible and the landing risky. Though promoted as an “improved”, or “upgraded” spacecraft, Voskhod was in fact nothing more than a stripped-down Vostok. It was designed to carry a crew of up to three instead of one, mainly for the purpose of achieving spectacular space firsts ahead of the Americans. It was a risky, and lucky, two-mission program.

With additional crew members, the ejection seat had to be removed, leaving the crew no method of pad or launch escape. This also affected the safe recovery of the two crews, as they could not eject prior to landing. The retro-rocket package that was added was essential for the crew to survive the landing impact. Both missions were completed without any serious incidents, but it was fortunate that nothing went wrong. This could have been a prime reason for the cancellation of the program after only two flights, moving on to the more capable Soyuz with its built-in soft-landing system.

For the American Shuttle, things were more complicated. With crews numbering up to seven, crew escape had limited options. For both the atmo­spheric landing tests using Enterprise in 1977 and the first four orbital test flights on Columbia, the two-person crews did have ejection seats for emergency escape during ascent or descent. Fortunately these were not required on the actual mis­sions. On Columbia, they were deactivated for STS-5 and removed for STS-9. No other Shuttle orbiter carried the system, as two-person Shuttle crews ceased with STS-4. Escape capsules were considered, but were deemed impractical for the spacecraft’s design.

Following the loss of Challenger in 1986, a slide pole was installed. Each of the crew wore escape pressure suits and had the capability to leave the vehicle to descend on their own parachutes—at least in theory. Crews trained for such evacuations as part of their mission preparation. Fortunately, this type of escape was never called upon. It would have required the vehicle to be in a relatively stable flight mode for the crew to avoid hitting somewhere on the orbiter as they evacuated through the side hatch. The Shuttle Orbiter was essentially a glider as it came home, capable of landing on the ground or even on the ocean, so evacuating the vehicle in stable flight seemed contrary to what it was designed to do—a controlled stable glide to an unpowered landing.

Conditions inside the orbiter as it fell through the atmosphere in an uncontrolled state would surely have made the slide pole an unlikely solution to crew escape. With the vehicle possibly breaking up in flight, the crew of up to seven would have had to leave their seats on the flight deck and mid-deck, moving around in bulky pressure suits to hook up to the slide pole. Then they would have had to hope to miss all the trailing debris as the vehicle dropped like a stone towards Earth.

In 2003, there was no time for the Columbia crew to react to the impending disaster. They were too high and traveling too fast to use the escape pole, even if they had had time to consider it.

During ascent, the Shuttle had a number of abort modes, giving the crew the option to return to the landing site, take it over the Atlantic to land at specific sites in Europe or Africa, to fly a single orbit and land on the next pass, or to abort the ascent into a low orbit. In the latter case, onboard systems would gradually have raised the orbit to at least an operational level, enabling the crew to conduct an alternative mission and probably return early. When the Shuttle launch abort modes were devised, each crew hoped they would not be called upon. They were there should the need arise and it did so during the 19th mission (STS-51F), in July 1985. On that mission, the loss of a main engine resulted in an abort to orbit and a revised, but still highly successful mission.

The abort modes were not new ideas. During Apollo, there were stages in the ascent where the mission could be aborted early to an emergency recovery in the Atlantic or to attain a lower-than-planned orbit to give the crew and Mission Control time to evaluate what to do next. The lunar missions featured points at which mission progress could be evaluated and the decision made whether to con­tinue. For most of the Apollo missions, each of these decision points was passed to allow the missions to achieve most of what was planned. The exception, of course, was Apollo 13. Here, the redundancy built into the design of the program came to the forefront and contributed to the recovery of the crew. But there were still points at which the skills and endurance of the crew and ground controllers were pushed to the limit.

It is interesting to note that, apparently, when the Astronaut Office was approached to fly a test demonstration of the Shuttle return to launch site abort mode, their response was that it could be tested when it was needed. Clearly, turning the stack around in flight and heading back to the launch site minutes after leaving it was not a favored option for the astronauts, even given their varied and very capable flying experiences. Thankfully it was never put into practice.

At the start of the new decade, Salyut 6 operations were winding down. Its last operations included the demonstration of the first add-on module docked to the core, in preparation for the launch of its replacement, Salyut 7, in 1982. Similar in appearance to the previous station, the new facility would continue where Salyut 6 left off, flying increasingly longer missions, with further visiting crews (this time more international than Interkosmos in nature). It would also see the first on- orbit partial crew exchanges and introduce a further add-on module to the main core station. Salyut 7 would also feature new endurance records for two expedi­tion crews (212 then 237 days), with a further residency of 150 days by a third crew in addition to partial crew residences of 112, 168, and 64 days.

In 1984, and again during 1985, cosmonauts demonstrated the value of having a crew in space when things go wrong by overcoming serious problems to keep the station operating successfully. These activities safely extended its working life until 1986 when a new, improved station appeared. The final crew was able to visit Salyut 7 in 1986 to complete the planned program.

Salyut operations were expected to be the mainstay of orbital operations for the Soviets for the rest of the decade. It was not exactly clear what form the much anticipated Salyut 8 would take, nor was it evident how things were about to dramatically change, not just in the national space program but also across the Soviet Union itself. This would have considerable global consequences as the decade closed.

As the Soviets transitioned from Salyut 6 to Salyut 7, the headlines were being generated by the return of American astronauts to orbit after a gap of six years. It was the start of the Space Shuttle era.