Kosmos 133, the first in the long line of Soyuz ("Union") spacecraft, lifted off unmanned from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Central Asia on November 28, 1966. Its mission: to dock automatically with Kosmos 134, another unmanned Soyuz that was scheduled to be launched the following day.
The new spacecraft included three modules. These were, from aft to fore, the cylindrical service module containing the spacecraft's main rocket engine; the cramped descent module, designed for land landing, which included the main control panel, heat shield, main and backup parachutes, soft-landing rockets, and three cosmonaut launch and landing couches; and, linked to the descent module by a hatchway, the ovoid orbital module, which contained extra living space and included a docking unit. The three modules had a combined mass of about 7000 kilograms.
During reentry, the orbital and service modules would separate from the descent module and disintegrate high above the Earth. The 2900-kilogram descent module would blaze through the atmosphere, rolling about its center of gravity to generate lift and reduce the level of deceleration its crew would experience. About 11 kilometers above the Earth, the module would deploy its twin drogue parachutes, then its single main parachute would open. Just before landing, it would ignite its solid-propellant soft-landing rockets, then it would bump down within a recovery zone north of Baikonur.
Any joy flight controllers in Moscow felt as Kosmos 133 soared above the Earth vanished when they found that its attitude control system did not work properly. They called off the Kosmos 134 launch. Several times they tried to orient Kosmos 133 so that its main engine pointed in its direction of motion in preparation for retrofire and reentry. On November 30, they commanded the first Soyuz to self-destruct when it appeared that it would land in China, far downrange from its intended recovery zone.
When reporting on the half decade that followed Kosmos 133, it needs less space to describe Soyuz and Soyuz-derived spacecraft successes than it does to list their failures. Kosmos 186 and 188 successfully performed an automated docking in late October 1967, and Kosmos 212 and 213 repeated the feat in April 1968. In January 1969, the manned Soyuz 4 and 5 spacecraft docked and two cosmonauts spacewalked between them. Zond 7, a prototype manned circumlunar Soyuz variant without an orbital module, flew unmanned around the moon and landed as planned in the Soviet Union in August 1969, a month after Apollo 11. The two-man crew of Soyuz 9 remained aloft for nearly 18 days in June 1970, breaking the space endurance record Gemini VII had set in 1965.
These scattered successes should not obscure the fact that, of the 16 individual cosmonauts launched on Soyuz between 1967 and 1971, one-quarter lost their lives. Of the more than 30 Soyuz-derived spacecraft launched in that same period, all but nine failed in some significant way.
Following the deaths of the three Soyuz 11 cosmonauts after they undocked from the Salyut 1 space station on June 29, 1971, Soyuz underwent a major redesign. When manned Soyuz flights resumed in September 1973, the spacecraft could carry no more than two space-suited cosmonauts. Soyuz spacecraft suffered more malfunctions in the 1970s, often failing to reach their space station targets, but no more cosmonauts died.
The 1977 advent of the highly reliable Progress Soyuz variant, an automated cargo ship for resupplying space stations, marked a break from the past for Soyuz. Malfunctions tailed off and, after a dramatic launch pad booster explosion in 1983, no Soyuz failed to dock with its space station target. Even the pad explosion could be seen as a sign of design maturity; despite suffering escape system damage, the Soyuz saved its crew.
Technology upgrades produced first the Soyuz-T and then the Soyuz-TM variants, which could transport up to three space-suited cosmonauts. By the early 1990s, Soyuz had developed a reputation for sturdy reliability.
Even before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, officials with the Soviet aerospace enterprise NPO Energia began to peddle their wares, including Soyuz, at major international aerospace meetings. An implied subtext of these promotional efforts was that, if the West would not buy products from the financially strapped Soviet aerospace sector, then its engineers might sell their technical expertise to countries opposed to Western interests. The threat - and promise - of Soviet space technology soon attracted the attention of the U.S. government. Spaceflight entered the geopolitical arena in a way it had not done since the mid-1970s, when the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) became the poster-child for President Richard Nixon's policy of detente.
In December 1991, Congress directed NASA to study the feasibility of using the Soyuz-TM as a low-cost "lifeboat" or "escape pod" for its planned Freedom space station. The concept of a space station lifeboat is an old one, dating back at least to the 1960s. NASA had acknowledged the need for such a vehicle soon after the January 1986 Challenger accident killed seven astronauts and grounded the Shuttle fleet for almost three years.
NASA foresaw three scenarios in which a space station lifeboat might save lives. First, a medical emergency on board Space Station Freedom might require rapid evacuation of a sick or injured astronaut. Second, a disaster on the station - for example, a fire - might render it uninhabitable. Finally, another Shuttle accident might ground the Orbiter fleet, stranding a crew on the station without resupply.
By early 1992, NASA had offered up several designs for an Assured Crew Return Vehicle (ACRV), as it called its planned Freedom lifeboat (image at top of post). Unfortunately, even the simplest would cost at least $1 billion to develop. It would, after all, constitute a wholly new piloted spacecraft designed to remain docked to Freedom for years, dormant but always ready.
As part of the preliminary Soyuz ACRV feasibility study for Congress, NASA engineers traveled to Moscow in March 1992 to meet with Russian government and NPO Energia officials. The agency completed its study the following month. In its study report, NASA portrayed Soyuz-TM as an interim lifeboat useful during the period when Freedom's crew numbered no more than three. Soyuz-TM would, it was hoped, move nearer the day when Freedom could be continuously staffed. In about the year 2000, as Freedom's population grew to six or eight astronauts, an "optimized" U.S.-built ACRV would take over from Soyuz.
On June 17, 1992, U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed agreements in Moscow providing for broad space cooperation. A Russian cosmonaut would fly on the U.S. Space Shuttle, a U.S. astronaut would live on board the Russian Mir station, and a Shuttle Orbiter would dock with Mir. The following day, NASA and the Russian Space Agency signed a $1-million contract by which they agreed to jointly assess Russian space technology, including Soyuz-TM, for use in NASA programs.
It had, of course, already become obvious that Soyuz-TM would need modifications to become an ACRV for Freedom. Most mundane, perhaps, its Russian control panel labels would need to be replaced with English. More importantly, its on-orbit endurance would need to be stretched from 180 days to three years and its docking unit would need to be made compatible with Freedom's docking ports. In addition, NPO Energia would need to find a way to squeeze NASA's tallest astronauts into Soyuz's cramped descent module.
Even more challenging was the matter of Freedom's orbit about the Earth. NASA planned to assemble its station in an orbit inclined 28.5° relative to Earth's equator. A Shuttle Orbiter launched due east from Kennedy Space Center, located on Florida's east coast at 28.5° north latitude, would in theory be capable of reaching Freedom bearing its maximum possible payload. The station would orbit over an equator-centered, globe-girdling band of Earth's surface spanning from 28.5° north latitude to 28.5° south latitude.
Freedom's orbit meant that, if Soyuz-TM were launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on the normal Soyuz launch vehicle, it could not reach the U.S. station. The sprawling central Asian launch complex is located in Kazakstan at 46° north. The Soyuz launch vehicle normally propels the Soyuz spacecraft toward an orbit inclined 51.6° relative to the equator to avoid overflying China during ascent to orbit. The Soyuz ACRV would then need to change its orbital plane by a whopping 23.1° to rendezvous with Freedom. Each degree of plane change would demand hundreds of kilograms of propellants. If the Soyuz ACRV were to be launched to Freedom from Baikonur, then the larger, more powerful, and more costly four-stage Proton booster would need to do the job. Its entire fourth stage, suitable for launching spacecraft out of Earth orbit toward the moon and planets, would have to be expended to make the plane change.
NASA envisioned that, instead of Proton, a Shuttle Orbiter launched from Kennedy Space Center would deliver the unmanned Soyuz ACRV to Freedom. Orbiter or station robot arms would then pluck it from the Orbiter payload bay and berth it at a waiting Freedom docking port. Alternately, the Soyuz ACRV might launch unmanned from Florida on a U.S. expendable rocket such as Atlas and perform an automated rendezvous and docking with Freedom.
Freedom's 28.5° orbit would also affect where the Soyuz ACRV's descent module could land after evacuating a Freedom crew. The normal Soyuz landing area is located at about 50° north, far out of range of a Soyuz descent module returning from Freedom.
In a June 1993 report, the ACRV Project Office at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston summed up its study of potential Soyuz ACRV landing zones. It noted that, because of Freedom's orbit, a Soyuz ACRV could land on U.S. soil only in south Texas or south Florida. (The report made no mention of Hawaii, the southernmost U.S. state, over which Freedom would pass regularly.)
The ACRV Project Office then looked abroad to countries with wide-open spaces. Australia appeared ideal. The northern two-thirds of the country lies between 28.5° and about 10° south latitude, and much of its interior is flat, arid, and sparsely populated.
As part of the June 1992 $1-million contract, NASA engineers and officials, a U.S. State Department representative, and NPO Energia engineer Valentin Ovciannikov traveled to Australia in November 1992 to conduct a preliminary assessment of four potential Soyuz ACRV landing zones. The Australian Space Office (ASO), working with the Australian Geological Survey Organization and the National Resource Information Center, selected the zones based on NPO Energia and NASA selection criteria.
The landing zone survey team stopped first in Australia's capital, Canberra, to meet with government officials. NASA expected that Australia, a signatory of the 1967 United Nations "Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, the Return of Astronauts, and the Return of Objects Launched into Space," would stand ready to assist space travelers forced to land in its territory. They found tentative support for their plans, though the Australians made it clear that they would approve nothing until the U.S. and Australia signed a nation-to-nation treaty covering responsibility for costs and damages.
On November 11, the team began a whirlwind eight-day, 5300-nautical-mile tour of the proposed landing zones. Team members flew first to Adelaide, capital of South Australia. There they met with state police to describe the Soyuz ACRV mission and learn about Search and Rescue (SAR) capabilities in the Coober Pedy-Oodnadatta region. Coober Pedy, "the Opal Capital of the World," is a town of about 2000 people located in the Australian Outback about 460 nautical miles north of Adelaide.
The team learned that the police were responsible for SAR operations throughout Australia, and that Australian SAR personnel and equipment were concentrated in capital cities, not scattered among small Outback communities. In South Australia, the state police had four elite rescue teams and three small airplanes that could reach Coober Pedy's 4633-foot-long asphalt runway from Adelaide in two and a half hours. They leased a single helicopter that could reach the area in four hours.
The next day (November 12), the team flew to Coober Pedy in a small chartered plane. They learned that Coober Pedy police and mine rescue had at their disposal several four-wheel-drive vehicles and an ambulance. They found that much of the area was dry and flat with red, gravel-covered soil of good bearing strength. The hard surface would enable four-wheel-drive vehicles to reach points throughout the area and would help to ensure that the Soyuz ACRV landing system would operate properly.
As an aside, the team noted in its report that NASA could learn a great deal by participating in a Soyuz-TM landing. NASA engineers subsequently observed the Soyuz-TM 16 landing in Kazakstan on July 22, 1993. It was an appropriate landing for them to observe, for the spacecraft had been used to test a Russian-built APAS-89 androgynous docking unit of the type U.S. Shuttle Orbiters would use to dock with Mir during the Shuttle-Mir missions (1994-1998). The APAS-89 system, which was based on the U.S.-Soviet APAS-75 system developed for ASTP, had been built originally to enable the Soviet Buran shuttle to dock with Mir.
In the south part of the Coober Pedy zone, the survey team gathered data on the "moon plain," a large area where trees - gidgee and acacia - grew along dry watercourses and the soil had "fair to poor" bearing strength. They also noted a field of small sand dunes. NPO Energia's Ovciannikov worried that the Soyuz ACRV descent module might roll between two dunes and became stuck with its top-mounted crew hatch buried in sand. Using a hand-held anemometer and historical weather data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the team determined that wind speeds near Coober Pedy would be acceptable for Soyuz ACRV landings.
The team spent the night in Coober Pedy listening to the distant howls and barks of dingos, then flew on to Perth, the capital of Western Australia. On November 13 they discussed with state police the SAR capabilities in the area of Meekatharra, about 770 miles to the northeast. They also learned of the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), which had one of its 14 bases in Perth. RFDS provided rapid medical response to two-thirds of the Australian continent, including all four of the candidate landing zones. In their report, the team suggested that NASA doctors should begin to coordinate with the RFDS as soon as possible.
The police in Perth made it clear that current local needs had priority over future NASA needs. They asked to be alerted 24 hours before an expected Soyuz ACRV landing. In its report, the team noted that this would not be possible for a medical evacuation or an emergency station evacuation, though it would be possible for a crew returning from Freedom during a Shuttle stand-down.
The team flew to Meekatharra on November 14. Of great interest was a 7156-foot-long, 150-foot-wide asphalt runway at the Meekatherra Airport. In their report, the team suggested that the runway, built originally for emergency 707 landings, might be used to land cargo planes bearing rescue equipment, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and helicopters.
The team judged that Meekatherra's soil was of "excellent" bearing strength. Acacia and mulga trees stood over less than 10% of the area, which was very flat. There were, however, scattered bedrock outcrops protruding from the windswept plain. In addition to presenting a minor impact hazard, the outcrops included naturally radioactive "uraniferous" deposits. Ovciannikov expressed concern that these might interfere with the descent module's altimeter, which relied on a radioactive source. (Rescuers would need to "safe" the source before extracting astronauts from the descent module.)
Meekatharra is only about 300 miles from Australia's west coast, a fact that had both pluses and minuses for Soyuz ACRV landings. On the one hand, it meant that debris from the discarded orbital and service modules would not fall on land. On the other hand, the descent module bearing the astronauts might fall short of land if it followed a ballistic reentry path - that is, if it failed to rotate about its center of gravity to generate lift. The Soyuz-TM descent module was designed to float, but a splashdown would complicate crew recovery. Following a ballistic reentry, quick crew recovery could be crucial; the ballistic reentry would subject the astronauts, who could be weak after a long stay in weightlessness, to deceleration equal to 10 times Earth's surface gravity.
The team flew on to Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory, on November 15. There territorial police described their 30-member Police Task Force, which was trained to deal with situations as diverse as riot control, bomb disposal, and cliff rescue.
The proposed Soyuz ACRV landing zone in the Northern Territory, the largest of the four candidate zones, was centered on the town of Tennant Creek (population 3200). The territorial police explained that their SAR resources were based both in Darwin, 600 miles from Tennant Creek, and in Alice Springs, 300 miles away.
The team visited the Tennant Creek zone on November 16. They learned that the Tennant Creek police force included 25 officers but only one four-wheel drive vehicle. As at other sites, the police worried that the Soyuz ACRV soft-landing rockets might start brush fires. NPO Energia's Ovciannikov assured them through an interpreter that they would not.
The team noted that proposed landing area was in the sprawling Barkley Tableland, a region of black-earth raised plains covered with gold-colored Mitchell grass. Ovciannikov observed that the area resembled the Soyuz-TM "landing grounds" around Dzhezkazgan, Kazakstan.
Unlike the other landing zones, Tennant Creek had distinct wet and dry seasons, with the former occurring in the southern-hemisphere summer/early autumn months (December through March). Located just 19.5° south of the equator, it was also the hottest of the four zones, with an average of 22 days per year above 40° Celsius (104° Farenheit). Flooding from seasonal rains would not interfere with a Soyuz ACRV landing, Ovciannikov explained, but it might impede surface vehicles dispatched to recover the astronauts.
The team flew to Charleville in Queensland on November 17 without stopping in Brisbane, the state's capital. They found that the airport in Charleville included two asphalt runways, the largest of which was 5000 feet long and 100 feet wide. Though they met with local police, the team's report on the Charleville zone included no SAR data.
Charleville's rolling plains, or downs, differed from the other zones the team surveyed in that they included many large trees (briglow and sandalwood) interspersed with "square" and "circle" treeless areas used for grazing and farming. Charleville police told the team that local ranchers and farmers knocked down and burned the trees to create grazing land; if left alone, however, the trees grew back within a few years.
Ovciannnikov compared Charleville to the "wooded steppe" on the north edge of the Soyuz-TM landing zone near Arkalyk, Kazakstan. The open areas would make acceptable landing sites, though the bearing strength of their black and brown loamy soils was rated only "fair."
The team returned to Canberra late on November 18. After another meeting with Australian government officials, during which they signed a document that summarized what the parties had learned and what had been agreed, its members departed Australia on November 20, 1992.
Shortly before the team began its Australian tour, U.S. voters had gone to the polls, where they favored Democrat William Clinton for President over Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush. Many in NASA feared that, after he took office in January 1993, Clinton would not support Space Station Freedom. With no station, their reasoning went, the Shuttle would lose its purpose, and U.S. piloted spaceflight would end.
Clinton did not in fact support Freedom; that did not mean, however, that he failed to find value in a space station. On March 9, 1993, he ordered NASA to produce three cost-contained station designs in 90 days. The President, aided by an advisory committee, would then select one design for continued development. Clinton also handed off supervision of the NASA space program to his Vice President, Al Gore. On March 25, Gore appointed the Advisory Committee on the Redesign of the Space Station, chaired by MIT's Charles Vest.
That same month, in a letter to NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin, Russian Space Agency director Yuri Koptev and NPO Energia director Yuri Semenov proposed what would become the NASA station program's salvation: a merger of the financially strapped, politically troubled Freedom and Mir-2 programs. They proposed that the joint station be assembled in an orbit inclined more than 50° relative to Earth's equator. The following month, the Russians provided NASA with a straw-man assembly sequence for the joint station.
On May 11, 1993, Vest advised the White House that, regardless of the station design selected, the U.S. station should be built in what he called a "world orbit" inclined between 45.6° and 51.6° so that Russian - and Japanese and Chinese - rockets and spacecraft could easily reach it. This would, he explained, ensure that redundant means of reaching the station would exist. He added that "the shuttle will likely be grounded again during the operational life of the station."
Vest presented the Advisory Committee's report to the White House on June 10, 1993. Barely two weeks later, on June 23, the U.S. station program had a near-death experience; the House of Representatives approved Fiscal Year 1994 station funding by a margin of a single vote (215-216). The close vote, which showed how politically vulnerable Freedom had become, clearly conveyed to many in NASA that station program reform had become essential.
President Clinton soon approved Option A, or Alpha, the station design most like Freedom. Meanwhile, the proposal to merge the U.S. and Russian station programs gained momentum. Engineers and managers in Moscow, Washington, and Houston began to refer to "Ralpha," which was short for "Russian Alpha."
On September 2, 1993, Vice President Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin released a joint statement on U.S.-Russian space cooperation. In it, they announced a dramatic expansion of the plan outlined in the June 1992 Bush-Yeltsin agreement. Russia became a full partner in the space station; minus its participation, the station simply would not fly. At the same time, however, NASA would pay Russia for its involvement, which put it in the role of a NASA contractor. Though ambiguous and controversial in some quarters, the expanded Russian role reinforced the geopolitical justification for the station, helping to ensure that Congress would support it.
In November 1993, NASA and the Russian Space Agency completed an addendum to NASA's August 1993 Alpha Station Program Plan. It amounted to a blueprint for merging the Alpha and Mir-2 programs. The resulting International Space Station (ISS) would be assembled in a 51.6° orbit, which meant that Soyuz landing zones in Australia were no longer required. Soyuz spacecraft returning from the ISS could land in their normal recovery zones in central Asia, or in backup zones in the U.S. Midwest and Great Plains. (The latter had existed, apparently without U.S. knowledge, since the 1970s.)
The first ISS resident crew, Expedition 1, departed Baikonur Cosmodrome on board Soyuz-TM 31 on October 31, 2000. While they were on board ISS, Soyuz-TM 31 did double-duty as their lifeboat. The Shuttle Orbiter *Discovery *retrieved the Expedition 1 crew in March 2001 and delivered their replacements. In May 2001, as Soyuz-TM 31 neared the end of its 180-day endurance, the Soyuz-TM 32 spacecraft arrived bearing visitors. After a week-long stay on the ISS, Soyuz-TM 32's crew returned to Earth in Soyuz-TM 31, leaving behind their fresh spacecraft for the Expedition 2 crew.
Per NASA requirements, NPO Energia redesigned the Soyuz-TM interior to produce the Soyuz-TMA. Soyuz-TMA's chief modification was that it could accommodate taller members of the U.S. astronaut corps than could previous Soyuz variants. Soyuz-TMA 1 reached space in October 2002. About a week later, its crew returned to Earth in Soyuz-TM 34, the last of Soyuz-TM series, leaving their fresh spacecraft for the resident ISS Expedition 6 crew.
Soyuz was the only ISS crew transport available during the 29-month Space Shuttle stand-down that followed the February 1, 2003 Columbia accident. While the Shuttle remained Earthbound, two-person "caretaker" crews staffed the ISS. The first, Expedition 7, reached the ISS on board Soyuz-TMA 2 in April 2003. Two-man crews remained the norm until the second post-*Columbia *Shuttle flight, STS-121, added a third crewman to Expedition 13 (July 2006). Each of the six caretaker crews landed in the same Soyuz-TMA spacecraft that had delivered them to the station.
The ISS began sporadically to support six-person crews starting with Expedition 20 in 2009. This necessitated the presence of two Soyuz spacecraft at the station to ensure lifeboat capability for the entire crew. For Expedition 20, the docked Soyuz were Soyuz-TMA 14 and Soyuz-TMA 15. From May to July 2009, astronauts from all the ISS partners (Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia, and U.S.) lived on board the ISS simultaneously for the first time.
In July 2011, President George W. Bush's January 2004 order to retire the Shuttle fleet when ISS assembly was completed took effect. Bush had failed to adequately fund the Shuttle's replacement, Apollo look-alike Orion, so that when he left office (January 20, 2009) its first manned orbital flight was still at least five years in the future. (The Augustine Committee estimated that Orion's first flight could not occur before 2017.) Soyuz again became the sole means of ISS crew transport.
Soyuz-TMA 22, launched November 14, 2011, and expected to undock from the ISS and return to Earth at the end of this week (April 27, 2012), is meant to be the last in its series. In October 2010 and June 2011, the Russians used Soyuz-TMA's planned successor, the Soyuz-TMA-M spacecraft, to deliver crews to the ISS. The missions, dubbed Soyuz-TMA-01M and Soyuz-TMA-02M, were considered test flights of the new Soyuz variant. In addition to digital avionics and modernized components, Soyuz TMA-M has a lighter computer and a greater payload-return capability than Soyuz-TMA.
Soyuz-TMA-03M, a "qualification" flight, is expected to be the last Soyuz-TMA-M flight before the new variant becomes fully operational. The Soyuz-TMA-03M spacecraft lifted off from Baikonur on December 21, 2011 bearing the three-man ISS Expedition 30 crew. At this writing, it is expected to remain docked to the ISS until June 2012.
References:
Alpha Station Addendum to Program Implementation Plan, RSA/NASA, November 1, 1993.
Australian Landing Sites Evaluation and Survey, JSC-34045, Assured Crew Return Vehicle (ACRV) Project Office, NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, June 22, 1993.
Assured Crew Return Vehicle (ACRV): Technical Feasibility Study on Use of the Soyuz TM for the Assured Crew Return Vehicle Missions, JSC-34038, Assured Crew Return Vehicle (ACRV) Project Office, NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, June 1993.
Letter with attachment, Charles M. Vest to John H. Gibbons, May 11, 1993.
Mir-Freedom Assembly Sequence, NPO Energia, April 1993.
Letter, Y. Koptev and Y. Semenov to D. Goldin, March 16, 1993.
*Assured Crew Return Vehicle (ACRV): Preliminary Feasibility Analysis of Using Soyuz TM for the Assured Crew Return Vehicle Missions* **Includes Evaluation of Automated Rendezvous and Docking System, JSC-34023, Assured Crew Return Vehicle Project Office, NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, April 1992.
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