Soyuz TMA-16M

Mission emblem

Mission dates

Mission:

Soyuz TMA-16M

Spacecraft:

Soyuz 7K-STMA-Z ( GRAY index 11F747)
serial number 716

Launcher:

Soyuz FG (GRAY index 11A511FG)

Call sign:

Альтаир (" Altair ")

Crew:

3

Begin:

March 27, 2015 19:42 UTC

Starting place:

Baikonur 1/5

Space station:

ISS

Docking place:

Poisk , later Zvezda

Coupling:

March 28, 2015 1:33 UTC

Decoupling:

September 11, 2015, 21:29 UTC

Duration on the ISS :

167d 19h 56min

Landing:

September 12, 2015, 00:51 UTC

Landing place:

153 km SE of Scheskasgan , Kazakhstan
47 ° 22 ′ N , 69 ° 39 ′ E

Flight duration:

168d 5h 9min

Earth orbits:

2619

Apogee :

406

Perigee :

396

Team photo

Scott Kelly, Gennadi Padalka, Mikhail Kornijenko

◄ Before / After ►

Soyuz TMA-15M
(manned)

Soyuz TMA-17M
(manned)

Soyuz TMA-16M is a mission name for the flight of the Russian spacecraft Soyuz to the International Space Station . As part of the ISS program, the flight is designated ISS AF-42S. It was the 42nd visit by a Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS and the 148th flight in the Soyuz program.

crew

Starting crew

Gennady Ivanovich Padalka (5th space flight), Commander ( Russia / Roscosmos )
Michail Borissowitsch Kornijenko (2nd space flight), flight engineer (Russia / Roskosmos)
Scott Joseph Kelly (4th spaceflight), flight engineer ( USA / NASA )

Substitute team

Alexei Nikolayevich Ovchinin (1st space flight), Commander (Russia / Roscosmos)
Sergei Alexandrowitsch Wolkow (3rd space flight), flight engineer (Russia / Roscosmos)
Jeffrey Nels Williams (4th spaceflight), flight engineer (NASA / USA)

Return crew

Gennady Ivanovich Padalka (5th space flight), Commander (Russia / Roscosmos)
Andreas Mogensen (1st space flight), flight engineer ( Denmark / ESA )
Aidyn Aimbetow (1st space flight), flight engineer ( Kazakhstan )

In September 2013 it was announced that the originally nominated commander Yuri Lonchakov had left the cosmonaut corps; later Roskosmos' director Oleg Ostapenko appointed him as director of the Yuri Gagarin cosmonaut training center . His replacement was Gennadi Padalka.

Mission description

The mission brought three crew members from ISS Expeditions 43 and 44 and two members from ISS Expeditions 45 and 46 to the International Space Station.

For the first time on the ISS, the working time of crew members (Michail Kornijenko and Scott Kelly) was extended to one year in order to better study the effects of long-term weightlessness with regard to a manned flight to Mars . The space freed up in the Soyuz spaceship was sold to space tourist Sarah Brightman . However, on May 13, 2015, it became known that she had postponed the flight indefinitely due to undisclosed family problems.

On August 28, 2015, the launch team to Gennady Padalka put the spacecraft from docking module Poisk for axial Andockplatz on residential and service module Zvezda to. This enabled the Soyuz TMA-18M spaceship with the ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen and the Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetow to dock at its correct docking port. The two took off on a short-term ISS mission with Soyuz TMA-18M and landed again with Soyuz TMA-16M.

Soyuz TMA-16M disconnected punctually on September 11, 2015 at 21:29 UTC with Padalka, Mogensen and Aimbetow on board. This marked the start of Expedition 45 on the ISS with Scott Kelly as commander. The deorbit burn , which lasted 4 minutes and 43 seconds, began at 23:59 UTC at a distance of 12 km from the ISS and brought the landing capsule into the denser areas of the earth's atmosphere at 0:28 UTC . The braking parachute was activated at a height of 10.8 kilometers, and the huge white and orange-striped main parachute unfolded at a height of about 7.5 kilometers. The landing finally took place at 0:51 UTC 153 km southeast of Scheskasgan at sunrise in the middle of the steppe of Kazakhstan .