OrbitalHub

The typical ATV mission starts in French Guiana, at the Kourou launch site. An Ariane 5 rocket deploys the ATV spacecraft on a circular Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at an altitude of 260 km. ATV then activates its navigation systems and fires its thrusters to reach the transfer orbit to the ISS.

After two or three days, and raising its orbit to 400 km, ATV will be in sight of ISS. It will start the approaching phase of the mission from about 30 km behind and 5 km below the station. Even if the approach and the docking procedures are fully automatic, the flight controllers can at any time call on the spacecraft and back away from the station. The ISS crew can also reject the spacecraft in case any anomalies are noticed.

Once the spacecraft is safely docked to the ISS, the station\’s crew can access the pressurized cargo section and remove the payload. After the payload is removed, the crew fills the cargo section with used hardware and waste materials. At intervals of 10 to 14 days, the main thrusters of the ATV will be used to boost the station\’s altitude. At the end of the mission, the ATV separates from the ISS, and performs a controlled and safe destructive re-entry somewhere above the Pacific Ocean.

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Credits: NASA

Carnival of Space #87 is hosted at The Martian Chronicles by Ryan Anderson.

This week, you can read about methane on Mars, NASA’s lunar rover, the ten space trends for 2009, building lunar outposts, space solar power, and much more.

OrbitalHub presents the Soyuz 4 and 5 missions. Soyuz 4 and 5 successfully carried out the first docking and crew transfer between two spacecraft on January 16, 1969.

Credits: NASA

Forty years ago, on January 16, 1969, two Russian spacecraft (Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5) carried out the first docking between two manned spacecraft and transfer of crew between the craft.

The Soyuz 4/5 mission was a critical milestone for the future of manned space missions, the rendezvous and docking of manned spacecraft being essential for the development of space stations.

Soyuz 4 was launched on January 14, 1969, with cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov on board. Soyuz 5 was launched one day later. Soyuz 5 had three cosmonauts on board: Boris Volynov, Alexei Yeliseyev, and Yevgeny Khrunov. During the mission, Soyuz 5 acted as the passive ship, while Soyuz 4 was the active chaser craft.

The two spacecraft docked at 0820 UT over the Soviet territory. The docking mechanism did not connect the pressurized modules of the Soyuz spacecraft and two of the cosmonauts on board Soyuz 5, Yevgeny Khrunov and Alexei Yeliseyev, performed EVAs in order to transfer to Soyuz 4.

Credits: NASA/R.F.Gibbons

Soyuz 4 and 5 undocked after three hours and thirty-five minutes.

Soyuz 4 fired its retro-rockets on January 17 and landed somewhere near Karaganda, in Kazakhstan.

Soyuz 5 had an eventful landing. After the retro-fire, the instrument module failed to separate from the descent module, and the landing could have been catastrophic due to the fact that the heat shield was not oriented properly.

However, the re-entry heat caused the propellant tanks in the instrument module to explode and the two modules eventually separated. The parachute had problems deploying properly and a failure of the soft-landing rockets occurred, so the landing was much harder than usual. Apparently, the landing shock was so great that Boris Volynov was thrown across the cabin and broke some of his front teeth.

Volynov landed far off course, in the Ural Mountains near Orenburg, in Russia. The event was kept secret and it eventually came to light in 1997, when an official history book mentioned the incident.

Forty years later, the Soyuz spacecraft is still the workhorse of the Russian space program, and continues to this day to serve as a transfer vehicle to and from the International Space Station (ISS), performing rendezvous and docking maneuvers on each mission.

Credits: SpaceX

SpaceX has announced that the Falcon 9 launch vehicle was raised to vertical on its launch pad at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

SpaceX was awarded a Commercial Resupply Service (CRS) contract in December 2008. The Falcon 9 launch vehicle and the Dragon spacecraft will be used as the primary means of transporting cargo to and from the International Space Station (ISS) after the Space Shuttle is retired by NASA.

The Falcon 9 launch vehicle will provide the lowest cost per kilogram to orbit. The 54.9 m long and 3.6 m wide launcher will be able to lift payloads with a mass of 12,500 kg to a low Earth orbit (LEO) for only $36.75 million. For more details on the pricing of the Falcon 9 missions, you can check out the page dedicated to Falcon 9 on SpaceX’s web site.

“This entire process has helped us validate key interfaces and operations prior to executing our launch campaign with the vehicle in its final flight configuration,” said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. “We encountered no show-stoppers or significant delays. I am highly confident that we will achieve our goal of being able to go from hangar to liftoff in under 60 minutes, which would be a big leap forward in capability compared with the days to weeks required of other launch vehicles.”

Credits: Orbital

Carnival of Space #86 is hosted by collectSPACE.

This week, you can take a tour of the sky, read about rare space artifacts, repulsive quantum forces, and stellar champagne, see images of an atypical galaxy, or take a class about Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The Canadian MOST (Yaay Canada!) is covered this week as well.

OrbitalHub presents Orbital’s Taurus II/Cygnus launch system. Orbital is one of the companies awarded Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contracts by NASA. Taurus II/Cygnus will service the International Space Station.

Credits: ESA/CNES/ARIANESPACE-Service Optique CSG 2002

Arianespace accounted for 50 percent of all commercial launches to geostationary transfer orbit during 2008 and retained its strong market share, which represented 72 percent of the orders booked in 2008.

Arianespace was founded in 1980. Among its 23 shareholders are the French space agency CNES with thirty-four percent and EADS Astrium with thirty percent. With only around 300 employees, the company has generated sales of about one billion euros in 2008.

2009 will be the year of the launcher family for Arianespace, as Arianespace Chairman and CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall pointed out during the company’s New Year’s press conference in Paris. The development of the Vega launcher is being finalized, the maiden launch of the medium-lift Soyuz launcher from Kourou in French Guiana will take place this year, and more than six missions are scheduled for Ariane 5.

“As a result of our launcher family strategy, Arianespace has a sustained agility that allows us to be ever more responsive to our customers,” Le Gall told the journalists. “The agility has been demonstrated with our 28 consecutive mission successes for Ariane 5 and the 21 for Soyuz – and is underscored by launches that are on target, and on time.”

With a full range of payload lift capabilities, including Vega, Soyuz, and Ariane 5, Arianespace is able to meet the changing trends in satellite weights, orbiting everything from light weight scientific payloads to heavy telecommunication relay platforms.