Soyuz TMA-1

Mission emblem

Mission dates

Mission:

Soyuz TMA-1

COSPAR-ID :

2002-050A

Spacecraft:

Soyuz 7K-STA ( GRAY index 11F732)
serial number 211

Launcher:

Soyuz FG (GRAY index 11A511FG)

Call sign:

Енисей (" Yenisei ")

Crew:

3

Begin:

October 30, 2002, 03:11:11 UTC

Starting place:

Baikonur 1/5

Space station:

ISS

Coupling:

November 1, 2002, 05:01:20 UTC
to the Pirs module

Decoupling:

May 3, 2003, 22:43:00 UTC
from the Pirs module

Landing:

May 4, 2003, 02:04:25 UTC

Landing place:

150 km north of Baikonur , Kazakhstan
49 ° 38 ′ N , 61 ° 21 ′ E

Flight duration:

185d 22h 53min 14s

Earth orbits:

3020

Apogee :

259 km

Perigee :

202 km

Team photo

v. l. No. De Winne, Salyotin, and Lonchakov

◄ Before / After ►

Soyuz TM-34
(manned)

Soyuz TMA-2
(manned)

Soyuz TMA-1 is the mission name for the flight of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) . It was the fifth visit by a Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS and the 111th flight in the Soyuz program.

crew

Starting crew

Sergej Viktorovich Salyotin (2nd space flight), Commander ( Russia )Russia

Frank De Winne (1st spaceflight), flight engineer ( ESA / Belgium )European space agency Belgium

Yuri Walentinowitsch Lontschakow (2nd space flight), flight engineer ( Russia )Russia

Substitute team

Yuri Valentinovich Lontschakow , commandant
Alexander Ivanovich Lasutkin , flight engineer

Return crew

Nikolai Michailowitsch Budarin (3rd space flight), Commander ( Russia )Russia

Kenneth Duane Bowersox (5th space flight), flight engineer ( NASA / United States ) United States

Donald Roy Pettit , (1st spaceflight) flight engineer ( NASA / United States ) United States

Mission overview

A three-seater Soyuz spaceship is always docked during manned missions on board the ISS. For safety reasons, especially because of the charged fuel, these spaceships remain on the ISS for a maximum of six months and therefore have to be replaced regularly. Missions that replace the Soyuz spaceships were given the name "taxi flights".

TMA-1 was the first of the new Soyuz generation with improved landing systems. When the TMA-1 re-entered, a system fault resulted in a ballistic re-entry, which exposed the crew to greater stress than with a guided and normally applied re-entry.

The TMA-1 was the 5th Soyuz to fly to the ISS, replacing the older Soyuz TM-34 model that had been in space since April 2002.

Delay in start

Due to an error in another Soyuz rocket on October 15, 2002 in Plesetsk , the Soyuz TMA-1 launch was postponed by two days from October 28, 2002 to October 30, 2002 in order to have more time to address the cause of the error Find. The official result of the investigation was that a foreign body in the drive caused the start to fail. The problem was deemed unimportant for other missiles of the same type, and preparations for the TMA-1 continued as planned.

The start

The Soyuz-FG rocket with the Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft was launched on October 30, 2002, 03:11:11 UTC from the Baikonur Cosmodrome . Nine minutes later, the TMA-1 reached orbit with Commander Sergei Saljotin, flight engineer Yuri Lonchakov and ESA astronaut Frank De Winne. The spacecraft berthed at the ISS docking port Pirs at 05:01 UTC on Friday, November 1st. 1.5 hours later the hatch to the ISS was opened. The crew returned to Earth eight days later on board the Soyuz TM-34 spacecraft , which had been in space for six months.

End of mission

The Soyuz TMA-1 served as a lifeboat for the crew on the ISS until May 2003. Originally it was planned that another “taxi” crew would fly back to earth with the TMA-1. Because of the Columbia disaster in February 2003, the shuttle fleet remained on the ground and the Soyuz TMA-1 was the only return option for the sixth long-term crew of the ISS .

Return: Unplanned ballistic re-entry

On May 4, 2003, the new Soyuz TMA model re-entered for the first time when it returned to Earth with the ISS expedition team: the Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and the American astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit.

Despite the unplanned re-entry according to the so-called "ballistic" procedure, all new systems of the Soyuz TMA-1 functioned properly. Above all, this includes the new system for a soft landing, which includes new engines and a new airframe, which is intended to reduce the landing impact from 12 g on the old Soyuz TM to 5 g on the Soyuz TMA. The parachutes of the Soyuz TMA-1 also worked properly.

The reason the Soyuz TMA-1 performed ballistic reentry and was 150 km north of Baikonur, i.e. H. 400 km before the intended landing site, there was a malfunction of the BUSP-M steering system, which is required for a controlled re-entry. This guidance system reads the data from the attitude control gyroscope and accelerometer and sends appropriate commands to the attitude control thrusters.

The yaw control channel of the BUSP-M delivered unclear measured values, which indicates a malfunction. As a result, higher-level control functions took the BUSP-M system out of the control loop and switched to the ballistic re-entry procedure.

With this the flight path is steeper than with a controlled re-entry, and the capsule rotates around its flight path axis in order to increase the stability. The steeper flight path shortens the flight time and causes more braking. As a result, the crew of the Soyuz TMA-1 was loaded with eight times the acceleration due to gravity (8 g), while with a controlled reentry the load would not exceed 6 g.

The BUSP-M system, in which the problem arose, was first used in 1979 in the Soyuz T-5 spacecraft and has since performed 49 times error-free controlled reentries. Attempts as part of the official investigations made by the commission of inquiry set up after the return of the Soyuz TMA-1 did not reveal any disturbances in the control system. The only way to reproduce the problem was through mathematical simulations, which showed that the probability of this problem occurring again is 1 in 7000.

There have only been three reentries of this type in the history of the Soyuz program, although ballistic descent is one of four permissible reentry procedures that Soyuz T, TM, and TMA capsules can make use of under different conditions; the other three are automatic and manual controlled re-entry and a ballistic replacement method.

The commission of inquiry came to the conclusion that the Soyuz TMA-2 did not need to be modified. In the meantime, the new Soyuz TMA has also been released for further missions with ESA participation.

Improvements

The first thing the Commission recommended was to improve communication possibilities by keeping a satellite mobile phone in the return capsule. This should already happen in the Soyuz TMA-2, which is why such a telephone is to be transported to the ISS in an unmanned Progress freighter. In the longer term, the installation of a satellite communication capacity such as COSPAS-SARSAT is recommended.

Second, appropriate changes are to be made as far as possible to prevent the team from entering incorrect control commands. These changes are deemed necessary because the sixth expeditionary crew accidentally switched on the course rendezvous / docking system during the re-entry procedure , although this has been shown not to have triggered the ballistic re-entry.

Zelenschikov also addressed the question of why so much time passed after the reentry before the Soyuz capsule and its crew were found. The rescue operation took longer than expected, but did not exceed the prescribed period of no more than three hours.

The Russian mission control center in Moscow and the crew of the search aircraft circling over the predicted landing area in Kazakhstan, despite the radio contact with the returnees prior to landing, did not know that a ballistic reentry had taken place because the astronauts did this in their conversations with the teams on the ground hadn't mentioned. Therefore, the search aircraft and the escort helicopter initially flew over the expected landing area and not the area in which the capsule would have been suspected after a ballistic re-entry.

The fact that the search was unsuccessful led the search team to the conclusion that such a re-entry must have taken place, whereupon they went to the corresponding area 400 km away. After landing, certain processes apparently went wrong, which led to the on-board antennas not being extended and then, after the crew had set up an antenna outside the capsule, the radio communication was not switched to an external transmission device. All of this has further delayed the finding of the astronauts. When the rescue team finally arrived, the Soyuz crew had been able to leave the capsule on their own.

In order to avoid such mishaps in the future, a revision of the on-board documentation on the mission processes and further training of future Soyuz TMA teams is recommended.