Recently in Russia Category

Citing safety and environmental concerns a Russian Defence Ministry report is recommending the end of using old RS-20 (SS-18, Satan missile) ICBM's for space launches. The RS-20's were called the Dnepr when converted for space launches. The first launch of the Dnepr as a space launcher took place in 1999. Since then there have been a further 16 launches of the vehicle with one failure which happened in 2006. Recent launches have suffered from numerous delays due to the failure of the Russian and Kazakhstan governments to agree on the drop zones for the first and second stages of the vehicle.

The Russian military spacecraft designated Cosmos 2480 was successfully launched at 1405 GMT on 17 May by a Soyuz U launch vehicle flying from the Plesetsk launch site in Northern Russia.  The spacecraft is believed to be a Yantar-4K2M (Kobalt M) class military reconnaissance satellite.

The Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft carrying the crew of NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin successfully docked with the Poisk module of the International Space Station at 0436 GMT on 17 May 2012.

A Russian Soyuz-FG rocket successfully launched the Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft carrying three crew to the International Space Station (ISS) at 0301 GMT this morning, 15 May. The three crew are Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka, Mission Commander. Cosmonaut Sergei Revin, Flight engineer and US astronaut Joe Acaba, Flight engineer. The spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the ISS at 0438 GMT on 17 May.

 

Soyuz TMA-04M launches to ISS - Courtesy Russian Federal Space Agency.

A Starsem-marketed Soyuz 2-1a launch of Europe's MetOp-B  weather satellite has been delayed by several weeks by a dispute involving its drop zones for its rocket stages. .The flight was originally scheduled for 23 May.  However the Russia's space agency Roscosmos space agency noted that "additional measures" were needed to ensure the drop zone availability for Soyuz' stages after the vehicle's liftoff from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. 

This was after concern was expressed by Kazakhstan that the stages from the Northbound launch may not land safely in the Northerly region near to the Baikonur launch site, near Tyuratam, Kazakhstan.  The fuel carried is poisonous.   MetOp-B is to be launched into a near Polar Sun-synchronous orbit, whereas most flights from Baikonur are usually in an easterly direction. 

MetOp-B is the second in a series of three meteorological spacecraft to be operated by EUMETSAT providing continuous weather observations until 2020.   MetOp-A was launched in October 2006 by Starsem on another Soyuz mission from Baikonur Cosmodrome.

A Russian-built ILS operated Proton M/Breeze M rocket has successfully launched the Yahsat-1B satellite from the Baikonur launch site near Tyuratam in Kazakhstan.  The launch took place at 2218GMT on 23 April.  The Yahsat 1B  commercial communications satellite uses an Astrium-built Eurostar E-3000 bus and a Ka-, Ku- and C-band communcations payload supplied by Thales Alenia Space.  The satellite will be operated by the Al Yah Satellite Communications (Yahsat) firm of Abu Dhabi also carries a military communications payload.

At 1420 GMT on 22 April 2012 the Russian cargo Progress M-015M spacecraft docked automatically to the International Space Station's Docking Compartment-1 (DC-1) Pirs nadir port, recently vacated by Progress M-014M.

Reports in the Russian Novosti Kosmonavtiki website state that the Russian Federal Space Agency is willing to go ahead with Phobos-Grunt 2 after the failure of the original Phobos-Grunt spacecraft in November 2011. The mission will be included in future plans but no date for the launch has yet been set. The original mission was intended to fly to the Martian Moon Phobos, collect some soil samples and return them to Earth.

 

Beginning on the 12 April, - and carrying on over the next two months,  the British Interplanetary Society in Vauxhall, London,  is showing  "First Orbit", the hit Internet film which re-creates the story of the Major Yuri Gagarin's revolutionary spaceflight of 12 April1961.   The quirk is that the film is being shown in 30 different languages after the film's fans around the world translated the Russian into subtitles for free.

This "installation art" documentary, which was directed and produced by Christopher Riley, tells the story of the very first orbit by mimicking the orbit in near real time by using footage shot mainly by Italian astronaut Paulo Nespoli while he was on the International Space Station (iSS) with the cooperation of NASA, ESA and Roscosmos. 

Interspersed in the subtitled footage is English commentary from contemporary Radio Moscow and BBC broadcasts complete with their strangely old fashioned accents.  The film was originally released on the internet to coincide with the 50^th anniversary of the flight last year.  It became a viral internet sensation taking the record, at over 3.5 million, for the largest number of hits on YouTube for a long film.

While the space station's orbital elements (i.e. its inclination, apogee, perigee and eccentricity) differ a bit from cosmonaut Gagarin's Vostok 1 spacecraft's passage, by cobbling together various sections of the high definition video along with actual footage (yes - most of that is in monochrome) as taken from the original and other space missions, director Christopher Riley has managed to create pretty close depiction on what it was like to look out of the Vostok's porthole window.

While there are a few quibbles about some of the views - at one stage a parachute appears to open before the re-entry (the shots were taken out of order from NASA's Apollo 10 mission re-entry) - Riley, who has a space related planetary geology background himself, and his editing team, took especial care to get the ground track and solar angles correct. Night views for the orbit, including some sparky thunderstorms, were provided by some NASA night vision cameras.  

Most impressively the voice communications during the first part of the flight between Gagarin and the ground stations (including the voice of legendary Soviet space designer S.P. Korolev) has been included after cooperation with the Russian government. 

During the latter part of the flight Gagarin is mainly silent.  He was alleged to have lost consciousness after his craft went into a spin minutes before it successfully re-entered Earth atmosphere.   Gagarin recovered consciousness in time to eject and parachute as planned from the re-entry capsule to a safe landing - though his ejection was kept under wraps for several years in case anyone challenged the new record given he had left the craft before it touched down.

While some of the images are beautiful, especially, the sunrise and sunsets emphasizing Earth's thin atmospheric border, the most impressive part of the film is actually its haunting musical score as composed by Philip Sheppard.  This is at times, reminiscent of music from the seminal eco-science fiction film "Silent Running".   In a presentation made before and after the showing, Riley apologized for the variable quality in some images variously caused by human focusing error, dirty windows and also by bright spot pixels caused by space radiation damage to the cameras' CCD (Charged Couple Device) sensors: a problem that Gagarin could barely have imagined in those pioneering and inspiring days.

Flightglobal/Ascend Overall Rating:  This film is, at times, awe inspiring and enlightening. It can also be a bit tedious as well, with long stretches in which nothing seems to be happening.   It is perhaps one to have running in the background (especially for the music) so you can dip in and dip out of a beautiful space trip - 7/10. 

The Attic Room productions film is now available now on DVD and Blue-ray. 

 http://www.firstorbit.org/

 

The last launch of a Russian Proton K vehicle took place on 30 March at 0549 GMT carrying the last of a long line of Oko (Eye) Early Warning satellites. The last Oko satellite is to be placed in geostationary orbit to monitor US missile launches. The Oko satellites will be replaced by a new Russian Early Warning system dubbed EKS that will have its own constellation of satellites.

According to the Ascend SpaceTrak database the Proton K vehicle has attempted 309 orbital launches and has failed 36 times. The Proton M is now the only Proton launch vehicle flying. It successfully launched the Intelsat 22 commercial communications spacecraft in an ILS marketed flight on 25 March. 

  The Oko satellites were first launched in 1972 and the operational constellation was intended to have four satellites in a highly elliptical Molniya orbit and two satellites in geostationary orbit to provide early warning of a US ballistic missile attack. The satellites employed infra-red telescopes to detect the heat of a missile exhaust against the cold surface of the Earth. 

Proton M launches Intelsat 22 satellite on 25 March. Image courtesy of ILS