Fwd: All-Civilian Soyuz TMA-17M Crew Ready for Launch

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: July 22, 2015 at 9:38:30 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: All-Civilian Soyuz TMA-17M Crew Ready for Launch

 

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
July 20th, 2015

All-Civilian Soyuz TMA-17M Crew Ready for Wednesday Launch to Space Station (Part 1)

By Ben Evans

Soyuz TMA-17M Commander Oleg Kononenko (center) will be embarking on his third long-duration voyage to the International Space Station (ISS). By contrast, Flight Engineer-1 Kimiya Yui (right) and Flight Engineer-2 Kjell Lindgren are making their first flights. Photo Credit: NASA

Clad in dark civilian suits, three soon-to-be spacefarers descended the aircraft steps at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 10 July, primed to become the latest—and somewhat belated—crew members bound for the International Space Station (ISS). Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, making his third orbital mission, will be joined by NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), for a five-month expedition whose very character has morphed significantly in recent weeks. Originally targeted to launch aboard Soyuz TMA-17M on 26/27 May, their flight was postponed in the aftermath of the Progress M-27M launch vehicle failure and in recent weeks has also been overshadowed by the catastrophic 28 June loss of SpaceX's CRS-7 Dragon cargo ship, which was carrying the first International Docking Adapter (IDA-1) in support of future Commercial Crew operations.

As outlined in a previous AmericaSpace article, the schedule initially called for the Soyuz TMA-15M crew of Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, U.S. astronaut Terry Virts, and Italy's first woman in space, Samantha Cristoforetti, to return to Earth on 14 May, completing their 171-day mission and leaving the ISS with a temporarily reduced population of Expedition 44 Commander Gennadi Padalka and One-Year crewmen Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko. With a handful of exceptions—most recently in November 2013—the station has followed this "indirect" rotation of its six-member expeditions, with the arrival of Kononenko, Lindgren, and Yui as the second half of Expedition 44 anticipated about two weeks later. However, the failure of Progress M-27M to achieve orbit successfully raised concerns about a possible link between the failure of the third stage of its Soyuz-2.1a booster and the Soyuz-FG vehicle to be utilized by the Soyuz TMA-17M crew.

In response to the failure, the launch of Kononenko, Lindgren, and Yui was postponed until the second half of July, and, in order to minimize the period of time that the space station would be at reduced crew strength, NASA and its International Partners (IP) agreed to keep Shkaplerov, Virts, and Cristoforetti in orbit, alongside Padalka, Kelly, and Kornienko through 11 June. Within weeks, Russia's investigation into the cause of the failure has reached its conclusion, and another member of the Soyuz booster family successfully delivered a classified Kobalt-M photographic reconnaissance satellite into low-Earth orbit from Russia's far-northern Plesetsk Cosmodrome on 5 June. This was followed by the launch of Progress M-28M from Baikonur on 3 July, which followed a longer-than-normal 48-hour rendezvous profile and successfully docked at the Earth-facing (or "nadir") port of the Pirs module on the Russian Orbital Segment (ROS).

Expedition 44 crewmen Kjell Lindgren (foreground) and Kimiya Yui prepare for an underwater EVA simulation. Photo Credit: NASA

By this time, of course, SpaceX's CRS-7 Dragon cargo ship—embarking on the seventh of at least 12 dedicated Commercial Resupply Services missions to transport a total of 44,000 pounds (20,000 kg) of equipment and supplies to the ISS—had been disastrously lost, just 139 seconds after departing Space Launch Complex (SLC)-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., on 28 June. This carried significant implications for upcoming operations aboard the U.S. Orbital Segment (USOS), since CRS-7 was carrying the first of two International Docking Adapters (IDA-1) to provide the primary means by which Boeing's CST-100 and SpaceX's own Dragon V-2 would interface with the ISS, from mid-2017 onward. In fact, IDA-1 would have been robotically removed from Dragon's trunk and "temp-stowed" on the Dextre Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator (SPDM) of the 57.7-foot-long (17.6-meter) Canadarm2 robotic arm, before being installed onto the Pressurized Mating Adapter (PMA)-2 at the forward end of the Harmony node during an EVA by Kelly (EV1) and Lindgren (EV2) on 17 August.

A second docking adapter (IDA-2) is currently expected to fly aboard the CRS-9 Dragon mission, whose own launch was originally targeted for December 2015, but which now appears likely to be delayed into January 2016. IDA-2 was originally intended to provide a backup docking interface and would have been mounted atop Pressurized Mating Adapter (PMA)-3 at the space-facing (or "zenith") port of Harmony. Since the IDAs are identical, it now seems that IDA-2 will be repurposed as the "primary" docking adapter, to be installed at the Harmony forward interface, with a replacement unit to be completed and launched at a late date to fulfil the "backup" role at Harmony zenith. "An IDA-3 will be built from spare parts," NASA's Rob Navias told AmericaSpace, but added that there was "no timetable" on when its completion or launch might occur. It is understood that IDA "qualification units" will form the backbone for IDA-3 and that the replacement docking adapter will fly aboard a future SpaceX Dragon.

The loss of the CRS-7 mission and the destruction of IDA-1 has inevitably impacted NASA's plan to effect a timely reconfiguration of the USOS for Commercial Crew operations, whose target date for initial piloted test flight in mid-2017 has been placed under additional strain, in light of apparent Congressional reluctance to fully fund the program. Nevertheless, last week NASA named veteran astronauts Bob Behnken, Eric Boe, Suni Williams, and Doug Hurley—who boast eight previous shuttle and ISS missions and over 408 cumulative days in space between them—to the first Commercial Crew training group. Speaking in the hours after the CRS-7 anomaly, NASA ISS Program Manager Mike Suffredini hinted that the launch of CRS-9 and IDA-2 might be brought forward from its December 2015 target date, depending upon the outcome of SpaceX's FAA-overseen investigation, although Novosti Kosmonavtiki has suggested that the mission may not occur before January 2016.

Kjell Lindgren explains one of the historic artifacts in the Gagarin Museum at the Star City cosmonauts' training center to his son. Photo Credit: NASA

The Soyuz TMA-17M crew had completed their final exams and were within days of traveling from the Star City cosmonauts' training center, on the forested outskirts of Moscow, to the desolate steppe of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, when they were informed that their launch had been delayed by two months. This allowed them to press ahead with refresher training, and, last month, Lindgren participated in his final suited EVA run in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, "Last last #NBL run for @astro_kjell in preparation for spacewalk late summer with @StationCDRKelly," tweeted Operations Engineer/Astronaut Instructor & EVA Flight Controller Scott Wray on 23 June, before signing off with "#proudinstructor."

Last week, on 8 July, the Interdepartmental Commission approved Kononenko, Lindgren, and Yui and their backups—Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, U.S. astronaut Tim Kopra, and Britain's Tim Peake—for the upcoming mission and the two crew flew into Baikonur two days later. The respective commanders, Kononenko and Malenchenko, respectively declared their readiness to execute the mission to members of the State Commission and Technical Management. After a night's rest, they plunged into inspections and fit-checks aboard their Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft at Site 254. "Under the supervision of specialists, the main and backup crews tested the equipment with which they will work in space," it was explained. These activities included familiarizing themselves with the interior of the spacecraft, donning and doffing and leak-checking their Sokol ("Falcon") launch and entry suits and working with on-board equipment. In keeping with tradition, on 12 July the six men raised the national flags of Russia, the United States, Japan, and Kazakhstan, and Soyuz TMA-17M was delivered to the Spacecraft Assembly and Testing Facility the next day for final closeout operations.

When fully fueled, the spacecraft—which consists of a spherical orbital module, a cylindrical instrument module, and a beehive-shaped descent module for the crew—carries about 1,760 pounds (800 kg) of unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide for its attitude control propellants, together with helium pressurant and oxygen and nitrogen for its environmental control systems. After the installation of the aerodynamic payload shroud, Soyuz TMA-17M was installed atop the Soyuz-FG booster and transferred in a horizontal configuration to Site 1/5 at Baikonur.

With liftoff targeted for 3:02 a.m. local time on Thursday, 23 July (5:02 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, 22 July), Launch Day promises to be a long one for the prime and backup crews. They will be awakened about 8.5 hours before T-0. They will shower and be disinfected, after which microbial samples will be taken in support of the scientific and biomedical investigations to be undertaken in orbit. Breakfast will be followed by departure from Baikonur's Cosmonaut Hotel and the traditional blessing by a Russian Orthodox priest. Kononenko, Lindgren, and Yui will then be bussed out to Site 254, where they will submit to final medical checks and don their Sokol launch and entry suits. This will offer them a final opportunity to speak, face-to-face, with their families, albeit from behind glass screens. They will then depart Site 254, bound for the launch pad.

Like several of its predecessors, Soyuz TMA-17M will embark on a six-hour, four-orbit "fast rendezvous" profile, to alleviate pressure on the crew. Earlier missions typically adopted a two-day rendezvous regime, which proved more economical in terms of propellant expenditure, but also tended to be highly cramped, stressful, and exacerbated nausea and motion sickness. First trialed by an unmanned Progress resupply craft in August 2012, the "fast rendezvous" was successfully executed by four Soyuz crews last year and would have been performed by Soyuz TMA-12M in March 2014, but for a malfunction shortly after orbital insertion. This forced the crew to revert to the standard two-day, 34-orbit approach profile, which was completed successfully. Since then, three other Soyuz crews have flawlessly completed the fast rendezvous profile. "Same-day" rendezvous and docking are nothing new. In September 1966, Gemini XI astronauts Charles "Pete" Conrad and Dick Gordon accomplished a rendezvous and docking with an Agena target vehicle just 85 minutes and a single orbit after launch. Several years later, during the Skylab era, crews followed an expedited rendezvous lasting nine hours to reach their home in space. However, since the late 1970s, in the interests of propellant economy, most crews—including shuttle-Mir and ISS flights—spent between one and two days in transit, prior to docking.

The Soyuz TMA-17M prime and backup crews raise the national flags of Russia, the United States, Japan, and Kazakhstan at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, earlier this month. Photo Credit: NASA

At Site 1/5, Kononenko, Lindgren, and Yui will be ensconced into their specially contoured seats aboard the Soyuz TMA-17M descent module about two hours before liftoff. As the Commander, Kononenko will occupy the center seat, flanked by Yui to his left side in the Flight Engineer-1 position and Lindgren to his right as Flight Engineer-2. Their launch vehicle is a descendent of Chief Designer Sergei Korolev's R-7 missile and will undergo final checks and be fully fueled with a highly refined form of rocket-grade kerosene, known as "RP-1," together with liquid oxygen. The latter will enter a "topping" mode after loading and all cryogenic boil-off will be continuously replenished until just before T-0. This will ensure that all tanks remain at "Flight Ready" levels, prior to the ignition of the RD-108 engine of the first stage and the RD-107 engines of the four tapering, strap-on boosters.

In the final 15 minutes, the Launch Abort System (LAS) will be armed and transferred to Automatic Mode and the crew will be instructed to close their visors. At this point, Kononenko's controls will be activated. Internal avionics will be initiated and the on-board flight recorders will be spooled-up to monitor the myriad systems of the Soyuz-FG booster throughout ascent. Inside the control bunker, the "launch key"—an actual, physical key—will be inserted in order to enable the rocket's ordnance. This will be followed by nitrogen purging, pressurization of the propellant tanks, and final cryogenic topping.

A minute before T-0, the Soyuz-FG will transition to Internal Power, and, at T-10 seconds, the engine turbopumps will attain full speed. Five seconds later, the engines of the core and tapering boosters will roar to life and quickly reach full power. This will produce a retraction of the fueling tower and a liftoff into the darkened Baikonur sky at 3:02 a.m. local time Thursday, 23 July (5:02 p.m. EDT Wednesday, 22 July).

Rising rapidly, the rocket will exceed 1,100 mph (1,770 km/h), within a minute of clearing the tower, and at T+118 seconds the four tapering boosters will be jettisoned, leaving the core stage alone to continue the boost into low-Earth orbit. By the two-minute mark, Kononenko, Lindgren, and Yui will surpass 3,350 mph (5,390 km/h), and, shortly thereafter, the escape tower and launch shroud will separate, exposing Soyuz TMA-17M to the near-vacuum of the rarefied high atmosphere. Four minutes and 58 seconds after leaving the desolate steppe of Central Asia, the core booster will separate at an altitude of 105.6 statute miles (170 km) and the third and final stage will ignite, accelerating the Soyuz spacecraft to a velocity of more than 13,420 mph (21,600 km/h). By the time the third stage separates, nine minutes into the flight, the crew will enter an orbit of about 125 x 160 miles (200 x 260 km), inclined 51.6 degrees to the equator, and will begin the process of deploying their craft's communications and navigation antennas and solar arrays.

Four maneuvering "burns" will be required to raise the apogee of this orbit to reach the operational altitude of the ISS. The first burn (DV-1) should occur 45 minutes into the mission, after which a second burn (DV-2) is timed at 90 minutes after liftoff. These will be followed by another pair of burns, later in the rendezvous sequence, which should position Soyuz TMA-17M for an on-time docking at the station's Earth-facing (or "nadir") Rassvet module at 8:43 a.m. Baikonur time Thursday (10:43 p.m. EDT Wednesday), about five hours and 51 minutes into the flight. Following standard pressure and leak checks, the hatches will be opened about 90 minutes later and Kononenko, Lindgren, and Yui will be greeted by the incumbent Expedition 44 crew of Commander Gennadi Padalka of Russia and One-Year crewmen Mikhail Kornienko and Scott Kelly, who will be entering their 118th day in orbit. Padalka—who has been the world's most seasoned spacefarer since 28 June—is expected to return to Earth in mid-September, whilst Kornienko and Kelly will remain aboard the ISS until March 2016.

With the arrival of the new crew, two Soyuz vehicles will thus be in residence at the space station, together with a pair of Russian resupply craft—Progress M-26M, launched in February 2015, and the recently launched Progress M-28M—although a steady ebb and flow of unpiloted visitors is expected to occur through the year's end. Progress M-26M is will depart on 14 August, after which Japan's fifth H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-5) "Kounotori" ("White Stork") is targeted to launch from Tanegashima Island on the 16th and be captured and robotically berthed by Canadarm2 at the nadir port of the Harmony node on the 20th. According to Novosti Kosmonavtiki, SpaceX's CRS-8 Dragon cargo mission—whose payload includes the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM)—remains targeted to launch on 2 September, although all Falcon 9 v1.1 flights remain in flux, pending the outcome of the investigation into the CRS-7 failure.

Expedition 44's Scott Kelly juggles fresh fruit, delivered recently aboard the Progress M-28M resupply craft. Kelly is now one-third of the way through his 342-day mission. Photo Credit: NASA

Further Russian operations will continue with the arrival of Progress M-29M in September and the departure of Progress M-28M and arrival of the new-specification "Progress-MS" in November, whilst Orbital Sciences Corp.—NASA's second Commercial Resupply Services partner—is expected to deliver its fourth dedicated Cygnus cargo mission aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V 401, no sooner than 3 December. The latter will represent the first Cygnus flight since the catastrophic loss of ORB-3 in October 2014, when its Antares booster exploded, seconds after liftoff from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island, Va.

For the first time in almost two years, a "direct handover" of ISS crew members is expected to occur in the first half of September, with no fewer than three piloted Soyuz TMA spacecraft briefly in residence at the orbital outpost. In late-August, Padalka, Kornienko, and Kelly will board their Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft and perform a short, 25-minute "hop" from the zenith-facing Poisk module to the aft port of the Zvezda service module, thus making room for the arrival of Soyuz TMA-18M on 1 September. Under normal circumstances, six-member ISS crews follow an "indirect handover," whereby a given three-member subset departs, temporarily reducing the station's population to three, after which a new crew arrives to restore it to six.

However, with Kornienko and Kelly embarking on a year-long mission, and with Padalka due to return to Earth after six months, a replacement Commander is required to join them for the second half of their long voyage. As such, veteran cosmonaut Sergei Volkov will command Soyuz TMA-18M and will be joined by Andreas Mogensen, Denmark's first astronaut, representing the European Space Agency (ESA), and Kazakhstan's Aidyn Aimbetov. The latter was added to the roster in recent weeks, following the withdrawal from training of English soprano and Spaceflight Participant (SFP) Sarah Brightman. With the arrival of Soyuz TMA-18M and Volkov, Mogensen, and Aimbetov, the ISS will host no less than nine crew members, simultaneously.

Soyuz TMA-17M's Kimiya Yui undergoes a fit-check of his Sokol ("Falcon") launch and entry suit at Baikonur. Photo Credit: NASA

ISS Program managers prefer to utilize the lateral Poisk and Rassvet modules for Soyuz dockings, in order that the Zvezda aft port—which runs along the station's longitudinal axis—can be employed by Progress resupply craft for orbital reboost maneuvers. Since Soyuz TMA-16M is due to depart on 12 September, a brief presence of a piloted craft at Zvezda aft is not expected to pose any visiting vehicle traffic complications. Soyuz TMA-16M will return to Earth with Padalka, Mogensen, and Aimbetov, with on-orbit leadership handed over to Scott Kelly, who will command Expedition 45 through December 2015 and Expedition 46 until March 2016. This means that Kononenko, Lindgren, and Yui will become the first three-member Soyuz expedition crew in ISS history to remain Flight Engineers throughout their mission; all other crews have included at least one astronaut or cosmonaut who has rotated into the command of the following expedition.

October 2015 promises to be a significant month in U.S. space endurance records, as Kelly officially becomes the most experienced NASA astronaut on the 14th, when he surpasses Mike Fincke's cumulative 381-day total, and will go on to exceed Mike Lopez-Alegria's accomplishment of 215 days in a single mission on the 28th. At some point in the month, Kelly and Lindgren are expected to perform two EVAs, which will come hard on the heels of the robotic relocation of PMA-3 from its present position on the Tranquility node to its Commercial Crew location at the zenith port of Harmony. At a Soyuz TMA-17M press conference at JSC in March—when Soyuz TMA-17M was still scheduled to fly in the May-November timeframe—AmericaSpace's Michael Galindo asked the crew about these EVAs and was told by Lindgren that "hopefully those will stay within our increment." With the delayed launch of Soyuz TMA-17M, Kononenko, Lindgren, and Yui's return to Earth has been similarly extended to 22 December, producing an overall mission duration of approximately 153 days.

Remarkably, for the second time in three months, it appears that a direct rotation will also occur late in the year, with Soyuz TMA-19M targeted to launch from Baikonur on 15 December, ferrying Yuri Malenchenko, Tim Kopra, and Tim Peake to the ISS, thereby expanding the Expedition 45 crew temporarily to nine members. In support of this direct rotation, the soon-to-depart Kononenko, Lindgren, and Yui will undock Soyuz TMA-17M from Rassvet and perform a 25-minute hop to the Zvezda aft port. This will open up the Rassvet interface for the arrival of Soyuz TMA-19M and its crew.

 

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

---

AmericaSpace

For a nation that explores
July 21st, 2015

All-Civilian Soyuz TMA-17M Crew Ready for Wednesday Launch to Space Station (Part 2)

By Ben Evans

 

The Soyuz TMA-17M prime and backup crews participate in a traditional tree-planting ceremony, ahead of launch. From left are Tim Peake, Tim Kopra, Yuri Malenchenko, Oleg Kononenko, Kimiya Yui, and Kjell Lindgren. Photo Credit: NASA

Three new spacefarers will rocket toward the International Space Station (ISS) tomorrow (Wednesday, 22 July), destined to spend about five months conducting research, maintenance, and reconfiguration of the U.S. Orbital Segment (USOS) of the multi-national orbiting outpost. As described in yesterday's AmericaSpace article, veteran Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and "rookies" Kjell Lindgren of NASA and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will launch from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, aboard Soyuz TMA-17M, at 3:02 a.m. local time Thursday (5:02 p.m. EDT Wednesday). In keeping with several previous ISS crews, they will follow a six-hour, four-orbit "fast rendezvous" profile to reach the space station and dock with its Earth-facing (or "nadir") Rassvet module at about 8:43 a.m. Baikonur time Thursday (10:43 p.m. EDT Wednesday). Current plans call for Kononenko, Lindgren, and Yui to join the incumbent Expedition 44 crew of record-setting Commander Gennadi Padalka and One-Year crewmen Mikhail Kornienko and Scott Kelly, all of whom have been in orbit since March.

Yesterday (Monday), the mammoth Soyuz-FG booster—a direct descendent of the R-7 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), conceived in the 1950s by the legendary Chief Designer, Sergei Korolev—was transferred horizontally by rail to Site 1/5 at Baikonur, much to the excitement of Kjell Lindgren's 7-year-old son. "THAT'S OUR ROCKET!" Lindgren tweeted, adding capitalization for understandable impact, to which recently returned Expedition 43 Commander Terry Virts responded: "The only thing better than launch, Kjell, is re-entry!" Earlier, inside the Spacecraft Assembly and Testing Facility at Baikonur, Lindgren posed with Kononenko and Yui at the foot of their horizontal booster. "The business end of our rocket," he tweeted on Sunday. "Hard to fully comprehend the power this thing will produce to get us into orbit."

Positioned in the center seat aboard Soyuz TMA-17M for tomorrow's launch is Oleg Dmitriyevich Kononenko, a veteran of two previous ISS expeditions—including command of Expedition 31 from April-June 2012—and holder of a cumulative 391 days, 11 hours, and 18 minutes in space, which currently positions him as the 19th most seasoned spacefarer in history. By the time Kononenko returns to Earth on 22 December, he will have amassed over 544 days in orbit, thereby pushing himself up the experience list into 11th place.

The Soyuz TMA-17M booster stands ready at Baikonur's Site 1/5, primed for tomorrow's launch of Oleg Kononenko, Kjell Lindgren, and Kimiya Yui. Photo Credit: Kjell Lindgren/NASA/Twitter

In the present ISS era, each Soyuz typically carries just one or two Russian cosmonauts, with the remaining seats occupied invariably by a U.S. astronaut and, twice annually, by a representative of one of the International Partners (IPs), whether the European Space Agency (ESA), the Italian Space Agency (ASI), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), or JAXA. This has created an operational climate in which civilian cosmonauts are commanding Soyuz missions more frequently, a situation quite different from the earlier Salyut and Mir eras, when military commanders were almost invariably paired with civilian flight engineers. In fact, since Expedition 1 got underway in the fall of 2000, no fewer than 13 of the 42 ISS-bound Soyuz spacecraft—about 30 percent—have been commanded by civilian cosmonauts. This contrasts sharply with the Soviet Union's Salyut era from 1971-1986, which saw just two civilian commanders in 40 station-bound Soyuz missions, and the Mir era from 1986-2000, which saw no civilian commanders in 30 launches.

Born on 21 June 1964 in Chardzhou—today's Türkmenabat—on the banks of the Amu Darya River and close to Turkmenistan's border with Uzbekistan, Kononenko grew up in a city whose position on the Silk Road made it culturally important and whose history extends back almost two millennia. "I am a person who does not analyze the past," Kononenko said in a recent interview. "I live in the present and a little bit in the future. However, I sometimes go back in time and analyze the steps and actions I took, and I realize that the vector was always pointed towards space."

It was a vector which was guided by his parents. As a boy, Kononenko yearned to design and fly his own space vehicle, although he very quickly encountered a crossroads: he could either become an engineer and designer, like his hero, Sergei Korolev, or become a cosmonaut. He chose the latter. "I could not imagine myself having another job," he said in the weeks preceding his second mission, in the fall of 2011. "Maybe it's different for some other people, but I always wanted to be a cosmonaut and I did not believe there is a better job … on Earth." His parents encouraged him to do well in his education and took him to model rocketry clubs, but Kononenko soon noticed that virtually all of the early cosmonauts were military pilots. And therein lay another obstacle. "Since I read a lot and I was performing modeling … my eyesight was worsening," he said, "and that was a tragedy, because I realized I was going to have problems entering a pilot school."

Commander Oleg Kononenko has accrued more than 391 days in space, during his two prior ISS missions. Photo Credit: NASA

A supportive math teacher then told him that civilians could also fly into space, and Kononenko entered the N.E. Zhukovsky Kharkov Aviation Institute, within today's Ukraine, graduating in 1988 as a mechanical engineer. He then worked as an engineer, design engineer, and leading design engineer for the Central Design Bureau in the south-eastern Russian city of Samara, before being selected as a test-cosmonaut candidate in early 1996. After two years of initial training, he qualified as a test-cosmonaut in March 1998 and commenced preparations for a future ISS expedition. In December 2001, he and fellow cosmonaut Gennadi Padalka—currently in orbit as Commander of Expedition 44—were named as the backup crew for the Soyuz TM-34 "taxi" mission, a 10-day voyage which took place in April-May 2002 and served to exchange Soyuz vehicles at the station.

Prior to the Columbia disaster, Kononenko was assigned with Padalka and U.S. astronaut Mike Fincke as the prime crew for Expedition 9, originally scheduled to take place between January-July 2004. Their names were formally announced in March 2002, and they would have launched aboard shuttle mission STS-119, but in the aftermath of Columbia and a reduction of ISS crews from three to two members, Kononenko found himself removed from the roster. He continued his generic training and in March 2006 began preparations with fellow cosmonaut Sergei Volkov for Expedition 17, to which he was officially assigned in February 2007. Launched aboard Soyuz TMA-12 on 8 April 2008, the pair were accompanied for the journey uphill by South Korea's Soyeon Yi—the latter of whom flew as a Spaceflight Participant (SFP)—and joined the incumbent Expedition 16 crew of U.S. astronauts Peggy Whitson and Garrett Reisman and Russia's Yuri Malenchenko. After a brief handover of operations, Whitson, Malenchenko, and Yi returned to Earth aboard their Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft, leaving Volkov, Kononenko, and Reisman aboard the ISS to continue Expedition 17 through the summer. In doing so, they became the first, and so far only, "all-rookie" crew of the ISS era.

This lack of prior spaceflight experience did not undermine what was a spectacular mission. During their six months aloft, Volkov and Kononenko welcomed two unpiloted Progress resupply freighters and the crew of Shuttle Discovery on STS-124, which delivered the pressurized research module of Japan's Kibo facility and exchanged Reisman for another U.S. astronaut, Greg Chamitoff. On 10 and 15 July, Volkov and Kononenko performed a pair of EVAs, totaling 12 hours and 12 minutes, whose tasks included inspecting their Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft—with specific focus upon problematic pyrotechnic bolts linking the instrument module to the descent module—and removing and installing scientific experiments and installing rendezvous equipment for the long-delayed Nauka Multi-Purpose Module (MLM). Finally, in October 2008, the Soyuz TMA-13 crew of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov, U.S. astronaut Mike Fincke, and SFP Richard Garriott arrived to begin a week of changeover operations. On the 23rd, Volkov, Kononenko, and Garriott boarded Soyuz TMA-12 and returned to Earth. Kononenko's first space mission was over after 198 days, 16 hours, and 20 minutes and over 3,100 orbits of Earth.

Kjell Lindgren explains one of the historic artifacts in the Gagarin Museum at the Star City cosmonauts' training center to his son. Photo Credit: NASA

By his own admission, Kononenko's second mission, to which he was formally assigned in October 2009, would be quite distinct from his first, for three reasons. Firstly, his crew would form part of the newly expanded ISS, which had by now moved into six-person operations. Secondly, "his crew" was an appropriate descriptor, because—joined by U.S. astronaut Don Pettit and Dutchman Andre Kuipers, flying on behalf of ESA—he would be in command of the Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft for launch, ascent, rendezvous, docking, undocking, and return to Earth. And finally, with the return of the Expedition 30 crew of U.S. astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoli Ivanishin in April 2012, Kononenko would take command of the ISS to lead Expedition 31 through the end of June.

Launched on 21 December 2011, Kononenko, Pettit, and Kuipers successfully reached the ISS about two days later, joining the incumbent Expedition 30 crew and kicking off what was expected to be a five-month expedition aboard the space station. However, delays to the launch of the following Soyuz TMA-04M crew from March until May 2012 obliged NASA and its partners to extend the landing of Kononenko, Pettit, and Kuipers from mid-May until 1 July, producing a total duration of 192 days, 18 hours, and 58 minutes, and a little over 3,000 orbits of the Home Planet. During their long stay, Kononenko and Shkaplerov performed an EVA lasting six hours and 15 minutes on 16 February 2012, during which they relocated the Strela ("Arrow") crane, jettisoned a Multi-Layer Insultion (MLI) cover, and installed and removed scientific samples. With the return of Burbank, Shkaplerov, and Ivanishin to Earth on 27 April, Kononenko took command of the ISS, and Expedition 31 was later expanded back to six members with the arrival of Soyuz TMA-04M crewmen Gennadi Padalka, Sergei Revin, and Joe Acaba. During their final weeks in orbit, Kononenko's crew welcomed the first privately funded cargo ship ever to berth at the ISS—the first SpaceX Dragon, flying its Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) "demo" mission—and supported numerous scientific investigations aboard the orbital outpost.

Landing on 1 July, Kononenko had accrued 391 days, 11 hours, and 18 minutes across his two missions, thereby positioning himself as the world's 16th most experienced spacefarer. Since then, his place on the records table has slipped slightly, with fellow cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov, Fyodor Yurchikhin, and Oleg Kotov edging him down to 19th place, although Kononenko is expected to move back up to 11th place by the time he returns to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-17M on 22 December.

Seated to Kononenko's left side aboard the spacecraft tomorrow, in the "Flight Engineer-1" position, will be Kimiya Yui, who becomes the 10th Japanese spacefarer and the fifth of his countrymen to embark on a long-duration mission. Since the commercial voyage of Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) journalist Toyohiro Akiyama to the Mir space station in December 1990, Japan has carved an impressive niche for itself in the annals of space exploration. The first "professional" Japanese astronaut, Mamoru Mohri, flew aboard the Spacelab-J shuttle mission in September 1992, followed by Japan's first woman in space, Chiaki Mukai, aboard STS-65 in July 1994, Japan's first spacewalker, Takao Doi, aboard STS-87 in the fall of 1997, and Japan's first long-duration space station occupant—and, subsequently, the island nation's first ISS Commander—Koichi Wakata, who flew a pair of lengthy missions in 2009 and 2013-2014. Others have participated in a number of key shuttle and station missions. Takao Doi, Soichi Noguchi, and Koichi Wakata were aboard the ISS for the installation of its three major Japanese elements in 2008-2009, whilst Naoko Yamazaki was the last Japanese ever to fly aboard the shuttle in April 2010.

Soyuz TMA-17M backup and prime crew members Tim Kopra (left) and Kjell Lindgren share a game of chess last week. Photo Credit: NASA

Making his first spaceflight, Yui—a former Lieutenant-Colonel in the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) and the first Japanese military man ever to travel beyond Earth—will spend exactly five months away from the Home Planet during Expeditions 44 and 45. Born in the lettuce-growing village of Kawakami, in Japan's Nagano Prefecture, on 30 January 1970, Yui graduated from the National Defense Academy in 1992, receiving education and training before enrolling in the Air Self-Defense Force as an officer. During his military career, he flew the F-15 Eagle and worked in the Air Staff Office's Defense Planning Division, before being selected by JAXA in early 2009. Due to the policy of Japan to separate military and scientific fields, Yui was required to retire from the JASDF in order to undertake astronaut training. He completed his initial training, alongside NASA's Group 20 astronauts and Canadian and European candidates, in the summer of 2011.

He was subsequently assigned with NASA astronaut Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, Cornell University planetary scientist Steve Squyres, and British ESA astronaut Tim Peake to participate in the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO)-16 undersea expedition in June 2012. During their 12 days situated 63 feet (19 meters) below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Key Largo, Fla., the crew worked to test innovative solutions to engineering challenges, allowing astronauts to eventually explore asteroids. It is fitting that Yui and Peake will also work together in an equally challenging environment in 2015, for they will both be aboard the ISS at the same time for a few days in December.

Yui was assigned to the Expedition 44/45 crew in October 2012. Originally scheduled to fly from 26/27 May through 5 November, recent delays to the ISS manifest—triggered by the April failure of Progress M-27M and subsequent booster inspections—mean that their launch and landing have been correspondingly pushed back. Current plans call for the Soyuz TMA-17M crew to return to Earth on 22 December, which means that Yui will be in orbit on 2 December, marking the 25th anniversary of Akiyama becoming Japan's first citizen in space. And when Yui returns to Earth, after about 153 days in orbit, he will automatically become the fourth most experienced Japanese astronaut to date.

Also aboard the Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft, seated to the right side of the cabin in the "Flight Engineer-2" position, is Dr. Kjell Norwood Lindgren, who becomes the third member of NASA's Group 20 astronaut intake—selected in June 2009—to draw a flight assignment and reach space. Born on 23 January 1973 in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, Lindgren spent much of his childhood in England and also lived in the Midwest of the United States. He earned a degree in biology, with a minor in Mandarin Chinese, from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1995, during which time he was also a member of the "Wings of Blue" parachuting team and served as an instructor, jumpmaster, and part of the intercollegiate national championship team.

When Soyuz TMA-17M arrives at the International Space Station (ISS), Kononenko, Lindgren, and Yui will be greeted by the incumbent Expedition 44 crew of (from left), Scott Kelly, Gennadi Padalka, and Mikhail Kornienko. Photo Credit: NASA

Lindgren then gained a master's credential in cardiovascular physiology from Colorado State University in 1996—conducting cardiovascular countermeasures research in the Space Physiology Laboratory at NASA's Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, Calif.—and received his medical doctorate from the University of Colorado in 2002. He completed a three-year residency in emergency medicine, including a chief resident year at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minn., followed by a National Library of Medicine Post-Doctoral Fellowship and Master of Health Informatics at the University of Minnesota in 2006. Lindgren subsequently undertook a two-year residency in aerospace medicine in 2008 and gained a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree in 2007 at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas.

In 2007, he arrived at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas,as a Wyle-University of Texas Medical Branch flight surgeon, supporting ISS operations at the cosmonauts' training center at Star City, on the forested outskirts of Moscow, as well as water survival exercises in Ukraine. Lindgren eventually rose to become Deputy Crew Surgeon for STS-130—the second-to-last voyage of Shuttle Endeavour—and Expedition 24, when he tendered his astronaut application, along with over 3,500 others, and was subsequently summoned for interview and later selected by NASA as a member of the greatest flying fraternity in the world. "I think I had a versatile background with emergency medicine and military experience in an operational setting," Lindgren told an interviewer from the University of Colorado Medical School. "I was used to decision-making under high pressure, in a team environment." Following two years of training and evaluation, Lindgren was assigned with Kononenko and Yui to the Expedition 44/45 crew in July 2013.

Interestingly, with the changes to the ISS manifest in the second half of the year, Kononenko, Lindgren, and Yui should set themselves up for some interesting situations, with regard to their fellow crewmates. During his five months aloft, Kononenko will spend time in orbit with several comrades from previous missions, both flown and unflown. When he arrives aboard the space station, the incumbent Expedition 44 Commander will be none other than Gennadi Padalka, with whom he initially trained for the original Expedition 9, way back in 2002. He will later be joined by his old Expedition 17 crewmate Sergei Volkov aboard Soyuz TMA-18M in early September and by Yuri Malenchenko—with whom he flew briefly for a handful of days in April 2008—who is due to arrive aboard Soyuz TMA-19M in mid-December. As for Yui, his former NEEMO-16 crewmate, Tim Peake, will arrive at the ISS toward the end of his expedition. And for all three Soyuz TMA-17M crewmen, they will be faced with the rare occurrence of meeting their entire backup crew in orbit, when Malenchenko, Peake, and U.S. astronaut Tim Kopra arrive at the station to kick off their own six-month expedition.

 

Copyright © 2015 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

 

---