OrbitalHub

Mea AI adiutor dicit:

​NASA astronaut Don Pettit, along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, successfully concluded a 220-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) with a safe landing in Kazakhstan on April 20, 2025. Their spacecraft, Soyuz MS-26, touched down southeast of Dzhezkazgan at 6:20 a.m. local time (9:20 p.m. EDT on April 19), coinciding with Pettit’s 70th birthday.​

The trio launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on September 11, 2024, and participated in Expeditions 71 and 72. During their time on the ISS, they orbited Earth 3,520 times, covering approximately 93.3 million miles.​

Throughout the mission, the crew conducted various scientific experiments. Pettit focused on enhancing in-orbit metal 3D printing capabilities, advancing water sanitization technologies, exploring plant growth under varying water conditions, and investigating fire behavior in microgravity.​

Following their return, the crew underwent routine medical evaluations. Pettit was transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, while Ovchinin and Vagner returned to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia.​

Video credit: NASA

NASA dicit:

Expedition 64 Commander Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos took a short ride away from the International Space Station March 19, undocking their Russian Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft from the Rassvet module on the Earth-facing port of the station’s Russian segment and redocking to the Poisk module on the station’s space-facing side.

The relocation maneuver cleared the Rassvet port for the April 9 arrival of three additional crew members, Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos and Mark Vande Hei of NASA, who will dock their Soyuz MS-18 vehicle after their launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Video credit: NASA

Wikipedia dicit:

The Progress is a Russian expendable cargo spacecraft. Its purpose is to deliver supplies needed to sustain human presence in orbit. While it does not carry a crew it can be boarded by astronauts when docked with a space station, hence it being classified as manned by its manufacturer. Progress is derived from the manned Soyuz spacecraft and launches on the same vehicle, a Soyuz rocket.

Progress has supported space stations as early as Salyut 6 and as recently as the International Space Station. Each year there are between three and four Progress flights to the ISS. A Progress remains docked until shortly before being replaced with a new one or a Soyuz (which will use the same docking port). Then it is filled with waste, disconnected, and de-orbited, at which point it burns up in the atmosphere. Due to the variation in Progress vehicles flown to the ISS, NASA uses its own nomenclature where “ISS 1P” means the first Progress spacecraft to ISS.

Progress was developed because of the need for a constant source of supplies to make long duration space missions possible. It was determined that cosmonauts needed an inflow of consumables (food, water, air, etc.), plus there was a need for maintenance items and scientific payloads that necessitated a dedicated cargo carrier. Such payloads were impractical to launch with passengers in the restricted space of a Soyuz. As of 1 December 2016 there have been 155 Progress flights with three failures. All three failures have occurred since 2011.

Video Credit: Roscosmos

Wikipedia dicit:

The Soyuz launcher was introduced in 1966, deriving from the Vostok launcher, which in turn was based on the 8K74 or R-7a intercontinental ballistic missile. It was initially a three-stage rocket with a Block I upper stage. Later a Molniya variant was produced by adding a fourth stage, allowing it to reach the highly elliptical molniya orbit. A later variant was the Soyuz-U. While the exact model and variant designations were kept secret from the west, the Soyuz launcher was referred to by either the United States Department of Defense designation of SL-4, or the Sheldon designation of A-2 (developed by Charles S. Sheldon, an analyst with the Library of Congress). Both systems for naming Soviet rockets stopped being used as more accurate information became available.

The production of Soyuz launchers reached a peak of 60 per year in the early 1980s. It has become the world’s most used space launcher, flying over 1700 times, far more than any other rocket. Despite its age and perhaps thanks to its simplicity, this rocket family has been notable for its low cost and high reliability.

Video Credit: Roscosmos

Wikipedia dicit:

A Soyuz spacecraft consists of three parts (from front to back): a spheroid orbital module, which provides accommodation for the crew during their mission; a small aerodynamic reentry module, which returns the crew to Earth; a cylindrical service module with solar panels attached, which contains the instruments and engines.

The orbital and service modules are single-use and are destroyed upon reentry in the atmosphere. Though this might seem wasteful, it reduces the amount of heat shielding required for reentry, saving mass compared to designs containing all of the living space and life support in a single capsule. This allows smaller rockets to launch the spacecraft or can be used to increase the habitable space available to the crew (6.2 m3 or 220 cu ft in Apollo CM vs 7.5 m3 or 260 cu ft in Soyuz) in the mass budget. The orbital and reentry portions are habitable living space, with the service module containing the fuel, main engines and instrumentation.

Soyuz can carry up to three crew members and provide life support for about 30 person days. The life support system provides a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere at sea level partial pressures. The atmosphere is regenerated through potassium superoxide (KO2) cylinders, which absorb most of the carbon dioxide (CO2) and water produced by the crew and regenerates the oxygen, and lithium hydroxide (LiOH) cylinders which absorb leftover CO2.

The vehicle is protected during launch by a payload fairing, which is jettisoned along with the SAS at ​2 1⁄2 minutes into launch. It has an automatic docking system. The ship can be operated automatically, or by a pilot independently of ground control.

Video Credit: Roscosmos

NASA dixit:

“The Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft docked to Poisk module of the International Space Station on March 23, 2018, at 3:40 p.m. EDT while both spacecraft were flying over Serbia.

Following their two-day trip, NASA astronauts Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold and cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos docked to the International Space Station. Their arrival restores the station’s crew complement to six as they wait to join Scott Tingle of NASA, Expedition 55 Commander Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).”

Video credit: Roscosmos