Manned Spaceflight Log 11-2006-2012

Following the publication of the first edition of Praxis Manned Spaceflight Log 1961-2006 we were pleased with the response and feedback from readers. It was always our intention to produce subsequent works covering the years beyond 2006 and it was rewarding to know that the earlier volume provided such a handy quick reference guide to each manned space mission; a guide that could lead to further research, or just answer a query. The work was never intended to be a definitive account of every mission, and it remains doubtful if such an encyclopedic series of volumes will ever be written, and in the scope of the original project there was simply not enough pages to expand each entry further than a brief summary.

For the current work we decided to cover the missions flown to the end of the fifth decade and those in the opening two years of the sixth decade of human orbital space flight operations. We were therefore able to update the original entry for Soyuz TMA-9 which had just been launched when the book went to press. By including the flights in 2011 we could introduce the first year in a new decade which also marked a number of milestones in space exploration.

In April 2011 the 50th anniversary of Vostok, the first space flight by Yuri Gagarin was celebrated around the world. That month also saw the 40th anniversary of the launch of Salyut, the world’s first space station and the 30th anniversary of the first Space Shuttle mission by Columbia. In October the 20th anniversary of the launch of Soyuz TM-13, the final manned space flight under the Soviet Union was quietly achieved, whilst back in March the 10th anniversary of the first exchange of ISS expeditions took place with the ISS-1 crew handing over to ISS-2. So, in the history books at least, 2011 was a banner year for manned space flight anniversaries, and also added a new entry with the final flight of the Space Shuttle in July and the mission of STS-135.

With the Americans flying the final Shuttle missions in 2011 so the Russians completed the final evaluations of the upgraded Soyuz TMA-M spacecraft. With the retirement of the Shuttle the TMA-M became the primary crew transport and rescue

vehicle for ISS operations for the next few years. In September the Chinese began their next phase of manned space operation with the launch of their first Salyut-class space station called Tiangong (“Heavenly Palace”).

The following year saw the first operational launches of the latest version of the venerable Soyuz and the initial crew to visit the Chinese space station. The Shenzhou 9 crew featured a three-person team including Jing Haipeng, the first Chinese taikonaut to make a second flight, having flown on Shenzhou 7 in 2008 and Liu Yang the first Chinese woman to fly in space. The year also saw the first (unmanned) commercial mission dock with the ISS, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which gave a successful demonstration of the capacity of the vehicle to support future manned space flights as one of several American aerospace company designs hoping to replace the Space Shuttle.

This book, therefore, focuses upon the latest developments covering September 2006 through December 2012, a period of six years in which the main space station assembly was completed, yet another lease of life was given to Soyuz after over 40 years of operational service, and a significant new step in the development of Chinese permanent presence in space. In this time period there were over 40 new space flights to insert into the log, an impressive total.

We have not, however, neglected the rich ancestry of these recent missions. In the earlier volume we explained the methods and systems available to reach space across the 1961 to 2006 period and, as we focused upon orbital space flight, we included a section that explained the quest for space in which efforts were made in ballistic suborbital flight by space capsules or astro-flights by winged vehicles, all within the confines of the Earth’s atmosphere. This included the 13 X-15 rocket plane astro-flights between 1962 and 1968 which surpassed the 80 km (50 mile) altitude, the two 1961 Mercury-Redstone suborbital missions that both surpassed the 185 km (115 miles) altitude, and all three 2004 SpaceShipOne X-Prize flights in excess of 100 km altitude (62 miles).

For this current edition we have amended the opening two chapters to overview those earlier efforts and incorporated the latest development and achievements to bring the story up to date and cover 50 years of operations. For the missions flown between 1961 and 2012 we have presented a short overview which describes the main milestones and advances within the first five decades of human space flight activities and what lessons were learned or experiences gained within each decade.

From Chapter 3 we cover the new space flights completed between September 2006 and December 2010 completing the fifth decade of operations including an update to conclude the Soyuz TMA-9 entry begun in the earlier edition. Chapter 4 commences the story of the sixth decade for missions flown in 2011 and to the end of September 2012. We have also included a brief entry for Soyuz TMA-06M launched and docked with the station in October 2012. These entries follow the format adopted in the earlier volume to provide continuity. A summary is then added for Chapter 5 which includes a resume of Soyuz TMA-07M, the final mission planned for 2012, looks forward to the remaining years of the sixth decade of operations, and discusses what may be the future of human space activities beyond that.

A series of appendixes and a bibliography complete the work offering further reference to the main text. The updated tables cover the period 1961-2012 and we have included a full EVA log which originally appeared in the companion title Walking in Space.