These were the simplest (as far as a spacecraft can be simple) devices that had a glorious history: the first manned flight into space, the first daily space flight, the first sleep of an astronaut in orbit (German Titov managed to oversleep a communication session), the first a group flight of two spacecraft, the first woman in space, and even such an achievement as the first use of a space toilet, carried out by Valery Bykovsky on the Vostok-5 spacecraft.

Boris Evseevich Chertok wrote well about the latter in his memoirs "Rockets and People":
“On June 18, in the morning, the attention of the State Commission and all the “fans” gathered at our checkpoint switched from Chaika to Hawk. Khabarovsk received Bykovsky’s message on the HF channel: “At 9:05 there was a cosmic knock.” Korolev and Tyulin immediately began development of a list of questions that should be asked to Bykovsky when he appears in our communication zone in order to understand how great the danger threatening the ship is.
Someone has already been given the task to calculate the size of the meteorite, which is sufficient for the astronaut to hear the “knock”. They also racked their brains over what could happen in the event of a collision, but without loss of tightness. Bykovsky was interrogated by Kamanin.
At the beginning of the communication session, when asked about the nature and area of ​​the knocking, the Hawk replied that he did not understand what was being said. After being reminded of the radiogram transmitted at 9.05 am and Zorya repeating its text, Bykovsky answered through laughter: “There was not a knock, but a chair. There was a chair, you understand? Everyone who listened to the answer burst out laughing. The cosmonaut was wished further success and was told that he would be returned to Earth, despite his brave act, at the beginning of the sixth day.
The "space chair" incident has entered the oral history of astronautics as a classic example of the misuse of medical terminology in the space communications channel.

Because Vostok 1 and Vostok 2 flew alone, and Vostok 3 and 4 and Vostok 5 and 6, which flew in pairs, were far apart, no photograph of this ship in orbit exists. You can only watch films from Gagarin's flight in this video from the Roscosmos television studio:

And we will study the device of the ship on museum exhibits. The Kaluga Museum of Cosmonautics has a life-size model of the Vostok spacecraft:

Here we see a spherical descent vehicle with a cunning porthole (we'll talk about it separately) and radio antennas, attached to the instrument-aggregate compartment with four steel bands. The fastening tapes are connected at the top with a lock that separates them to separate the SA from the PAO before entering the atmosphere. On the left you can see a pack of cables from PAO, attached to a CA of solid size with a connector. The second porthole is located on the reverse side of the SA.

There are 14 balloons on the PJSC (I already wrote about why in astronautics they like to make balloons in the form of balloons so much) with oxygen for the life support system and nitrogen for the orientation system. Below, on the surface of the PAO, tubes from balloons, electrovalves and orientation system nozzles are visible. This system is made according to the simplest technology: nitrogen is supplied through electrovalves in the required quantities to the nozzles, from where it escapes into space, creating a reactive impulse that turns the ship in the right direction. The disadvantages of the system are the extremely low specific impulse and the short total operating time. The developers did not assume that the astronaut would turn the ship back and forth, but would get by with the view through the window that the automation would provide him.

The solar sensor and the infrared vertical sensor are located on the same side surface. These words only look terribly abstruse, in fact, everything is quite simple. To decelerate the ship and deorbit it must be deployed "tail first". To do this, you need to set the position of the ship along two axes: pitch and yaw. Rolling is not so necessary, but it was done along the way. At first, the orientation system gave out an impulse to rotate the ship in pitch and roll and stopped this rotation as soon as the infrared sensor caught the maximum thermal radiation from the Earth's surface. This is called "setting the infrared vertical". Due to this, the engine nozzle became directed horizontally. Now you need to direct it straight ahead. The ship turned around in a yaw until the solar sensor recorded the maximum illumination. Such an operation was carried out at a strictly programmed moment, when the position of the Sun was exactly such that, with the solar sensor directed at it, the engine nozzle turned out to be directed strictly forward, in the direction of travel. After that, also under the control of a time-programming device, a brake propulsion system was launched, which reduced the speed of the ship by 100 m/s, which was enough to deorbit.

Below, on the conical part of the PJSC, another set of radio communication antennas and shutters are installed, under which the radiators of the thermal control system are hidden. By opening and closing a different number of shutters, an astronaut can set a comfortable temperature for him in the spacecraft cabin. Below all is the nozzle of the brake propulsion system.

Inside the PJSC are the remaining elements of the TDU, tanks with fuel and oxidizer for it, a battery of silver-zinc galvanic cells, a thermoregulation system (a pump, a supply of coolant and tubes to radiators) and a telemetry system (a bunch of various sensors that monitored the status of all ship systems).

Due to the restrictions on dimensions and weight dictated by the design of the launch vehicle, the backup TDU simply would not fit there, therefore, for the Vostoks, a somewhat unusual emergency deorbit method was used in case of TDU failure: the ship was launched into such a low orbit, in which it it will burrow into the atmosphere itself after a week of flight, and the life support system is designed for 10 days, so the astronaut would have survived, even though the landing would have happened where the hell.

Now let's move on to the device of the descent vehicle, which was the cabin of the ship. Another exhibit of the Kaluga Museum of Cosmonautics will help us with this, namely the original SA of the Vostok-5 spacecraft, on which Valery Bykovsky flew from June 14 to June 19, 1963.

The mass of the apparatus is 2.3 tons, and almost half of it is the mass of the heat-protective ablative coating. That is why the Vostok descent vehicle was made in the form of a ball (the smallest surface area of ​​all geometric bodies) and that is why all the systems that were not needed during landing were brought into an unpressurized instrument-aggregate compartment. This made it possible to make the SA as small as possible: its outer diameter was 2.4 m, and the astronaut had only 1.6 cubic meters of volume at his disposal.

The cosmonaut in the SK-1 space suit (space suit of the first model) was seated on an ejection seat, which had a dual purpose.

It was an emergency rescue system in the event of a launch vehicle failure at launch or during the launch phase, and it was also a regular landing system. After braking in the dense layers of the atmosphere at an altitude of 7 km, the cosmonaut ejected and descended on a parachute separately from the spacecraft. He, of course, could have landed in the apparatus, but a strong blow when touching the earth's surface could lead to injury to the astronaut, although it was not fatal.

I managed to photograph the interior of the descent vehicle in more detail on a model of it in the Moscow Museum of Cosmonautics.

To the left of the chair is the control panel for the ship's systems. It made it possible to regulate the air temperature in the ship, control the gas composition of the atmosphere, record the astronaut's conversations with the earth and everything else that the astronaut said on a tape recorder, open and close the porthole shutters, adjust the brightness of the interior lighting, turn the radio station on and off, and turn on the manual orientation system. in case of automatic failure. The toggle switches for the manual orientation system are located at the end of the console under a protective cap. On Vostok-1, they were blocked by a combination lock (its keypad is visible a little higher), as doctors were afraid that a person would go crazy in zero gravity, and entering the code was considered a sanity test.

Directly in front of the chair is a dashboard. This is just a bunch of display meters, by which the astronaut could determine the flight time, the air pressure in the cabin, the gas composition of the air, the pressure in the tanks of the attitude control system and his geographical position. The latter was shown by a globe with a clockwork, turning in the course of flight.

Below the dashboard is a porthole with a Gaze tool for the manual orientation system.

It is very easy to use it. We deploy the ship in roll and pitch until we see the earth's horizon in the annular zone along the edge of the porthole. There, just mirrors stand around the porthole, and the entire horizon is visible in them only when the apparatus is turned straight down through this porthole. Thus, the infrared vertical is manually set. Next, we turn the ship along the yaw until the run of the earth's surface in the porthole coincides with the direction of the arrows drawn on it. That's it, the orientation is set, and the moment the TDU is turned on will be prompted by a mark on the globe. The disadvantage of the system is that it can only be used on the day side of the Earth.

Now let's see what is to the right of the chair:

A hinged cover is visible below and to the right of the dashboard. A radio station is hidden under it. Below this cover, the handle of the automated control system (cessation and sanitary device, that is, the toilet) sticking out of the pocket is visible. To the right of the ACS is a small handrail, and next to it is the ship's attitude control handle. A television camera was fixed above the handle (another camera was between the dashboard and the porthole, but it is not on this layout, but it is visible in Bykovsky's ship in the photo above), and to the right - several covers of containers with a supply of food and drinking water.

The entire inner surface of the descent vehicle is covered with white soft fabric, so that the cabin looks quite cozy, although it is cramped in there, like in a coffin.

Here it is, the world's first spaceship. In total, 6 manned spacecraft Vostok flew, but unmanned satellites are still operated on the basis of this ship. For example, Biome, intended for experiments on animals and plants in space:

Or the topographic satellite Comet, whose descent module anyone can see and touch in the courtyard of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg:

For manned flights, such a system is now, of course, hopelessly outdated. Even then, in the era of the first space flights, it was a rather dangerous apparatus. Here is what Boris Evseevich Chertok writes about this in his book "Rockets and People":
“If the Vostok ship and all the modern main ones were put on the training ground now, they would sit down and look at it, no one would vote to launch such an unreliable ship. I also signed the documents that everything is in order with me, I guarantee flight safety. Today I I would never have signed it. Gained a lot of experience and realized how much we risked."

The first manned flight into space was a real breakthrough, confirming the high scientific and technical level of the USSR and accelerating the development of the space program in the United States. Meanwhile, this success was preceded by hard work on the creation of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the progenitor of which was the V-2 developed in Nazi Germany.

Made in Germany

The V-2, also known as the V-2, Vergeltungswaffe-2, A-4, Aggregat-4 and "Weapon of Retribution", was created in Nazi Germany in the early 1940s under the direction of designer Wernher von Braun. It was the world's first ballistic missile. "V-2" entered service with the Wehrmacht at the end of World War II and was used primarily for strikes against British cities.

Model of the rocket "V-2" and a picture from the movie "Girl in the Moon". Photo by Raboe001 from wikipedia.org

The German rocket was a single-stage liquid-fueled rocket. The launch of the V-2 was carried out vertically, and navigation on the active part of the trajectory was carried out by an automatic gyroscopic control system, which included software mechanisms and instruments for measuring speed. The German ballistic missile was capable of hitting enemy targets at a distance of up to 320 kilometers, and the maximum flight speed of the V-2 reached 1.7 thousand meters per second. The V-2 warhead was equipped with 800 kilograms of ammotol.

German rockets had low accuracy and were unreliable, they were used mainly to intimidate the civilian population and had no noticeable military significance. In total, during the Second World War, Germany produced over 3.2 thousand V-2 launches. About three thousand people died from these weapons, mostly from among the civilian population. The main achievement of the German rocket was the height of its trajectory, which reached one hundred kilometers.

The V-2 is the world's first rocket to make a suborbital space flight. At the end of World War II, the V-2 samples fell into the hands of the winners, who began to develop their own ballistic missiles based on it. Programs based on the V-2 experience were led by the USA and the USSR, and later by China. In particular, the Soviet ballistic missiles R-1 and R-2, created by Sergei Korolev, were based precisely on the V-2 design in the late 1940s.

The experience of these first Soviet ballistic missiles was later taken into account when creating more advanced intercontinental R-7s, the reliability and power of which were so great that they began to be used not only in the military, but also in the space program. In fairness, it should be noted that in fact the USSR owes its space program to the very first V-2, released in Germany, with a picture from the 1929 film Woman in the Moon painted on the fuselage.

Intercontinental family

In 1950, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution under which research work began in the field of creating ballistic missiles with a flight range of five to ten thousand kilometers. Initially, more than ten different design bureaus participated in the program. In 1954, work on the creation of an intercontinental ballistic missile was entrusted to the Central Design Bureau No. 1 under the leadership of Sergei Korolev.

By the beginning of 1957, the rocket, which received the designation R-7, as well as the test facility for it in the area of ​​​​the village of Tyura-Tam, were ready, and tests began. The first launch of the R-7, which took place on May 15, 1957, was unsuccessful - shortly after receiving the command to launch, a fire broke out in the tail section of the rocket, and the rocket exploded. Repeated tests took place on July 12, 1957 and were also unsuccessful - the ballistic missile deviated from the given trajectory and was destroyed. The first series of tests was recognized as a complete failure, and during the investigations, design flaws in the R-7 were revealed.

It should be noted that the problems were fixed quite quickly. Already on August 21, 1957, the R-7 was successfully launched, and on October 4 and November 3 of the same year, the rocket was already used to launch the first artificial Earth satellites.

The R-7 was a liquid propellant two-stage rocket. The first stage consisted of four conical side blocks 19 meters long and three meters in diameter. They were located symmetrically around the central block, the second stage. Each block of the first stage was equipped with RD-107 engines, created by OKB-456 under the leadership of Academician Valentin Glushko. Each engine had six combustion chambers, two of which were used as steering. RD-107 worked on a mixture of liquid oxygen and kerosene.

The RD-108, which was structurally based on the RD-107, was used as the second stage engine. The RD-108 was distinguished by a large number of steering chambers and was able to work longer than the power plants of the first stage blocks. The start of the engines of the first and second stages was carried out simultaneously during the launch on the ground with the help of pyro-igniters in each of the 32 combustion chambers.

In general, the R-7 design turned out to be so successful and reliable that a whole family of launch vehicles was created on the basis of an intercontinental ballistic missile. We are talking about such missiles as Sputnik, Vostok, Voskhod and Soyuz. These rockets carried out the launch of artificial earth satellites into orbit. On rockets of this family, the legendary Belka and Strelka and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made their first space flight.

"East"

The three-stage carrier rocket "Vostok" from the R-7 family was widely used at the first stage of the USSR space program. In particular, with its help, all spacecraft of the Vostok series, the Luna spacecraft (with indices from 1A, 1B and up to 3), some satellites of the Kosmos, Meteor and Elektron series were put into orbit. The development of the Vostok launch vehicle began in the late 1950s.

Launch vehicle "Vostok". Photo from sao.mos.ru

The first rocket launch, carried out on September 23, 1958, was unsuccessful, like most other launches of the first stage of testing. In total, 13 launches were made at the first stage, of which only four were recognized as successful, including the flight of the dogs Belka and Strelka. Subsequent launches of the launch vehicle, also created under the direction of Korolev, were mostly successful.

Like the R-7, the first and second stages of the "Vostok" consisted of five blocks (from "A" to "D"): four side blocks 19.8 meters long and with a maximum diameter of 2.68 meters and one central block 28.75 meters long meters and the largest diameter of 2.95 meters. The side blocks were located symmetrically around the central second stage. They used already proven liquid engines RD-107 and RD-108. The third stage included block "E" with a liquid engine RD-0109.

Each engine of the blocks of the first stage had a vacuum thrust of one meganewton and consisted of four main and two steering combustion chambers. At the same time, each side block was equipped with additional air rudders for flight control in the atmospheric section of the trajectory. The second-stage rocket engine had a vacuum thrust of 941 kilonewtons and consisted of four main and four steering combustion chambers. The powerplant of the third stage was capable of delivering 54.4 kilonewtons of thrust and had four steering nozzles.

The installation of the vehicle launched into space was carried out on the third stage under the head fairing, which protected it from adverse effects when passing through the dense layers of the atmosphere. The Vostok rocket with a launch weight of up to 290 tons was capable of launching a payload of up to 4.73 tons into space. In general, the flight proceeded according to the following scheme: the ignition of the engines of the first and second stages was carried out simultaneously on the ground. After the fuel in the side blocks ran out, they were separated from the central one, which continued its work.

After passing through the dense layers of the atmosphere, the head fairing was dropped, and then the second stage was separated and the third stage engine was started, which was switched off with the separation of the block from the spacecraft after reaching the design speed corresponding to the launch of the spacecraft into a given orbit.

"Vostok-1"

For the first launch of a man into space, the Vostok-1 spacecraft, designed to carry out flights in low Earth orbit, was used. The development of the apparatus of the Vostok series began in the late 1950s under the leadership of Mikhail Tikhonravov and was completed in 1961. By this time, seven test launches had been made, including two with human dummies and experimental animals. On April 12, 1961, the Vostok-1 spacecraft, launched at 9:07 am from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, put pilot-cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit. The device completed one orbit around the Earth in 108 minutes and landed at 10:55 near the village of Smelovka, Saratov Region.

The mass of the ship on which a man first went into space was 4.73 tons. "Vostok-1" had a length of 4.4 meters and a maximum diameter of 2.43 meters. Vostok-1 included a spherical descent vehicle weighing 2.46 tons and 2.3 meters in diameter and a conical instrument compartment weighing 2.27 tons and with a maximum diameter of 2.43 meters. The mass of thermal protection was about 1.4 tons. All compartments were interconnected with metal bands and pyrotechnic locks.

The spacecraft equipment included systems for automatic and manual flight control, automatic orientation to the Sun, manual orientation to the Earth, life support, power supply, thermal control, landing, communications, as well as radio telemetry equipment for monitoring the astronaut's condition, a television system, and an orbit parameter control system. and direction finding of the apparatus, as well as the system of the brake propulsion system.

The instrument panel of the Vostok spacecraft. Photo from dic.academic.ru

Together with the third stage of the Vostok-1 launch vehicle, it weighed 6.17 tons, and their combined length was 7.35 meters. The descent vehicle was equipped with two windows, one of which was located on the entrance hatch, and the second - at the feet of the astronaut. The astronaut himself was placed in an ejection seat, in which he had to leave the apparatus at an altitude of seven kilometers. The possibility of a joint landing of the descent vehicle and the astronaut was also provided.

It is curious that Vostok-1 also had a device for determining the exact location of the ship above the Earth's surface. It was a small globe with a clockwork, which showed the location of the ship. With the help of such a device, the cosmonaut could make a decision to start a return maneuver.

The scheme of operation of the apparatus during the landing was as follows: at the end of the flight, the braking propulsion system slowed down the movement of Vostok-1, after which the compartments were separated and the separation of the descent vehicle began. At an altitude of seven kilometers, the cosmonaut ejected: his descent and the descent of the capsule were carried out by parachute separately. It was supposed to be so according to the instructions, but at the completion of the first manned flight into space, almost everything went completely differently.

The birth of the "Union"

The first manned satellites of the Vostok series (index 3KA) were created to solve a narrow range of tasks - firstly, to get ahead of the Americans, and, secondly, to determine the possibilities of life and work in space, to study the physiological reactions of a person to orbital factors. flight. The ship brilliantly coped with the assigned tasks. With its help, the first breakthrough of a man into space (“Vostok”) was carried out, the world’s first daily orbital mission (“Vostok-2”) took place, as well as the first group flights of manned vehicles (“Vostok-3” - “Vostok-4” and "Vostok-5" - "Vostok-6"). The first woman went into space also on this ship ("Vostok-6").

The development of this direction was the vehicles with indices 3KV and 3KD, with the help of which the first orbital flight of a crew of three cosmonauts (“Voskhod”) and the first manned spacewalk (“Voskhod-2”) were carried out.

However, even before all these records were set, it was clear to the leaders, designers and designers of the Royal Experimental Design Bureau (OKB-1) that not the Vostok, but another ship, more advanced and safe, would be better suited to solve promising problems, having extended capabilities, extended system life, convenient for work and comfortable for the life of the crew, providing more gentle descent modes and greater landing accuracy. To increase the scientific and applied "return" it was necessary to increase the size of the crew by introducing narrow specialists into it - doctors, engineers, scientists. In addition, already at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, it was obvious to the creators of space technology that in order to further explore outer space, it was necessary to master the technologies of rendezvous and docking in orbit to assemble stations and interplanetary complexes.

In the summer of 1959, OKB-1 began searching for the appearance of a promising manned spacecraft. After discussing the goals and objectives of the new product, it was decided to develop a fairly versatile device suitable for both near-Earth flights and lunar flyby missions. In 1962, as part of these studies, a project was initiated that received the cumbersome name "Spacecraft Assembly Complex in Earth Satellite Orbit" and the short code "Soyuz". The main task of the project, during the solution of which it was supposed to master the orbital assembly, was the flight around the moon. The manned element of the complex, which had the index 7K-9K-11K, was called the "ship" and the proper name "Soyuz".

Its fundamental difference from its predecessors was the possibility of docking with other vehicles of the 7K-9K-11K complex, flying over long distances (up to the orbit of the Moon), entering the earth's atmosphere at a second space velocity and landing in a given area of ​​the territory of the Soviet Union. A distinctive feature of the "Union" was the layout. It consisted of three compartments: household (BO), instrumental-aggregate (PAO) and descent vehicle (SA). This decision made it possible to provide an acceptable habitable volume for a crew of two or three people without a significant increase in the mass of the ship's structure. The fact is that the Vostokov and Voskhod descent vehicles, covered with a layer of thermal protection, contained systems needed not only for descent, but for the entire orbital flight. By moving them to other compartments that do not have heavy thermal protection, the designers could significantly reduce the total volume and mass of the descent vehicle, and, therefore, significantly lighten the entire ship.

I must say that according to the principles of division into compartments, the Soyuz was not much different from its overseas competitors - the Gemini and Apollo ships. However, the Americans, who have a great advantage in the field of microelectronics with a high resource, managed to create relatively compact devices without dividing the living volume into independent compartments.

Due to the symmetrical flow around when returning from space, the spherical descent vehicles of Vostok and Voskhod could only perform an uncontrolled ballistic descent with rather large overloads and low accuracy. The experience of the first flights showed that these ships during landing could deviate from a given point by hundreds of kilometers, which greatly hampered the work of specialists in the search and evacuation of astronauts, sharply increasing the contingent of forces and means involved in solving this problem, often forcing them to disperse over a vast territory . For example, Voskhod-2 landed with a significant deviation from the calculated point in such a hard-to-reach place that the search engines were able to evacuate the crew of the ship only on the third (!) Day.

The Soyuz descent vehicle acquired a segmental-conical shape of a “headlight” and, when a certain centering was chosen, flew in the atmosphere with a balancing angle of attack. The asymmetric flow generated lift and gave the apparatus "aerodynamic quality". This term defines the ratio of lift to drag in the flow coordinate system at a given angle of attack. At the Soyuz, it did not exceed 0.3, but this was enough to increase the accuracy of landing by an order of magnitude (from 300-400 km to 5-10 km) and reduce G-forces by a factor of two (from 8-10 to 3-5 units). when descending, making landing much more comfortable.

The “Spacecraft Assembly Complex in Earth Satellite Orbit” was not implemented in its original form, but became the ancestor of numerous projects. The first was 7K-L1 (known under the open name "Zond"). In 1967-1970, under this program, 14 attempts were made to launch unmanned analogues of this manned spacecraft, 13 of which were aimed at flying around the moon. Alas, for various reasons, only three can be considered successful. Things did not come to manned missions: after the Americans flew around the moon and landed on the lunar surface, the interest of the country's leadership in the project faded, and 7K-L1 was closed.

Lunar orbiter 7K-LOK was part of the manned lunar complex N-1 - L-3. Between 1969 and 1972, the Soviet super-heavy rocket N-1 was launched four times, and each time with an accident. The only "almost full-time" 7K-LOK died in an accident on November 23, 1972 in the last launch of the carrier. In 1974, the project of the Soviet expedition to the moon was stopped, and in 1976 it was finally canceled.

For various reasons, both the "lunar" and "orbital" branches of the 7K-9K-11K project did not take root, but the family of manned spacecraft for carrying out "training" operations for rendezvous and docking in near-Earth orbit took place and was developed. It branched off from the Soyuz theme in 1964, when it was decided to work out the assembly not in lunar, but in near-Earth flights. This is how 7K-OK appeared, which inherited the name Soyuz. The main and auxiliary tasks of the initial program (controlled descent in the atmosphere, docking in near-Earth orbit in unmanned and manned versions, the transition of cosmonauts from ship to ship through open space, the first record-breaking autonomous flights for the duration) were completed in 16 Soyuz launches (eight out of they passed in a manned version, under the "generic" name) until the summer of 1970.

⇡ Task optimization

At the very beginning of the 1970s, the Central Design Bureau of Experimental Machine Building (TsKBEM, as OKB-1 became known since 1966) based on the systems of the 7K-OK spacecraft and the body of the OPS Almaz manned orbital station, designed in OKB-52 V. N Chelomeya, developed a long-term orbital station DOS-7K ("Salyut"). The beginning of the operation of this system made autonomous flights of ships meaningless. Space stations provided a much larger volume of valuable results due to the longer work of astronauts in orbit and the availability of space for installing various complex research equipment. Accordingly, the ship delivering the crew to the station and returning it to Earth turned from a multi-purpose ship into a single-purpose transport ship. This task was entrusted to the manned vehicles of the 7K-T series, created on the basis of the Soyuz.

Two catastrophes of ships based on 7K-OK, which occurred in a relatively short period of time (Soyuz-1 on April 24, 1967 and Soyuz-11 on June 30, 1971), forced the developers to reconsider the safety concept of vehicles of this series and modernize a number of basic systems, which negatively affected the capabilities of the ships (the period of autonomous flight was sharply reduced, the crew was reduced from three to two astronauts, who now flew on critical sections of the trajectory dressed in emergency rescue suits).

The operation of the 7K-T type transport spacecraft continued to deliver cosmonauts to orbital stations of the first and second generation, but revealed a number of major shortcomings due to the imperfection of the Soyuz service systems. In particular, the control of the ship's movement in orbit was too "tied" to the ground infrastructure for tracking, controlling and issuing commands, and the algorithms used were not insured against errors. Since the USSR did not have the ability to place ground communication points along the entire surface of the globe along the route, the flight of spacecraft and orbital stations took place outside the radio visibility zone for a significant part of the time. Often the crew could not fend off emergency situations that occurred on the “dead” part of the orbit, and the “man-machine” interfaces were so imperfect that they did not allow the astronaut to fully use the capabilities. The fuel supply for maneuvering was insufficient, often preventing repeated docking attempts, for example, in case of difficulties during approach to the station. In many cases, this led to the disruption of the entire flight program.

To explain how the developers managed to cope with the solution of this and a number of other problems, we should step back a little in time. Inspired by the success of the head OKB-1 in the field of manned flights, the Kuibyshev branch of the enterprise - now the Progress Rocket and Space Center (RKC) - under the leadership of D. I. Kozlov in 1963 began design studies on the military research ship 7K-VI, which , among other things, was intended for reconnaissance missions. We will not discuss the very problem of the presence of a person on a photographic reconnaissance satellite, which now seems at least strange - we will only say that in Kuibyshev, on the basis of Soyuz technical solutions, the appearance of a manned vehicle was formed, which differs significantly from its progenitor, but is focused on launch using a launch vehicle of the same family that launched ships of the 7K-OK and 7K-T types.

The project, which included several highlights, never saw space, and was closed in 1968. The main reason is usually considered the desire of the TsKBEM management to monopolize the subject of manned flights in the head design bureau. It proposed instead of one 7K-VI ship to design the Soyuz-VI orbital research station (OIS) from two components - the orbital unit (OB-VI), the development of which was entrusted to the branch in Kuibyshev, and the manned transport vehicle (7K-S), which was designed on its own in Podlipki.

Many decisions and developments made both in the branch and in the head design bureau were involved, however, the customer, the USSR Ministry of Defense, recognized the already mentioned complex based on the Almaz OPS as a more promising means of reconnaissance.

Despite the closure of the Soyuz-VI project and the transfer of significant TsKBEM forces to the Salyut DOS program, work on the 7K-S ship continued: the military was ready to use it for autonomous experimental flights with a crew of two, and the developers saw in project the possibility of creating on the basis of 7K-S modifications of the ship for various purposes.

Interestingly, the design was carried out by a team of specialists not related to the creation of 7K-OK and 7K-T. At first, the developers tried, while maintaining the overall layout, to improve such characteristics of the ship as autonomy and the ability to maneuver over a wide range, by changing the power structure and the locations of individual modified systems. However, as the project progressed, it became clear that a fundamental improvement in functionality is possible only by making fundamental changes.

Ultimately, the project had fundamental differences from the base model. 80% of the 7K-S on-board systems were developed anew or significantly modernized; modern element base was used in the equipment. In particular, the new Chaika-3 motion control system was built on the basis of an on-board digital computer complex based on the Argon-16 computer and a strapdown inertial navigation system. The fundamental difference of the system was the transition from direct motion control based on measurement data to control based on a corrected ship motion model implemented in the onboard computer. The navigation system's sensors measured angular velocities and linear accelerations in a linked coordinate system, which, in turn, were simulated in a computer. "Chaika-3" calculated the movement parameters and automatically controlled the ship in optimal modes with the lowest fuel consumption, carried out self-control with the transition - if necessary - to backup programs and means, giving the crew information on the display.

The cosmonauts' console installed in the descent vehicle became fundamentally new: the main means of displaying information had matrix-type command and signal consoles and a combined electronic indicator based on a kinescope. Fundamentally new were the devices for exchanging information with the on-board computer. And even though the first domestic electronic display had (as some experts joked) a “chicken intelligence interface”, this was already a significant step towards cutting the information “umbilical cord” connecting the ship with the Earth.

A new propulsion system was developed with a single fuel system for the main engine and mooring and orientation micromotors. It became more reliable and contained more fuel than before. The solar panels removed after the Soyuz-11 for lightening were returned to the ship, the emergency rescue system, parachutes and soft landing engines were improved. At the same time, the ship outwardly remained very similar to the 7K-T prototype.

In 1974, when the USSR Ministry of Defense decided to abandon autonomous military research missions, the project was refocused on transport flights to orbital stations, and the crew was increased to three people, dressed in updated emergency rescue suits.

⇡ Another ship and its development

The ship received the designation 7K-ST. Due to the totality of numerous changes, they even planned to give it a new name - "Vityaz", but in the end they designated it as "Soyuz T". The first unmanned flight of the new device (still in the 7K-S version) was made on August 6, 1974, and the first manned Soyuz T-2 (7K-ST) launched only on June 5, 1980. Such a long journey to regular missions was due not only to the complexity of new solutions, but also to a certain opposition from the “old” development team, who continued to refine and operate the 7K-T in parallel - from April 1971 to May 1981, the “old” ship flew 31 times under the designation "Soyuz" and 9 times as a satellite "Cosmos". For comparison: from April 1978 to March 1986, 7K-S and 7K-ST made 3 unmanned and 15 manned flights.

Nevertheless, having won a place in the sun, the Soyuz T eventually became the “workhorse” of the domestic manned cosmonautics - it was on its basis that the design of the next model (7K-STM), intended for transport flights to high-latitude orbital stations, began. It was assumed that the third-generation DOS would operate in orbit with an inclination of 65 ° so that their flight path would capture most of the country's territory: when launched into orbit with an inclination of 51 °, everything that remains north of the path is inaccessible to instruments intended for observation from orbits.

Since the Soyuz-U launch vehicle, when launching vehicles to high-latitude stations, lacked approximately 350 kg of payload mass, it could not put the ship in the standard configuration into the desired orbit. It was necessary to compensate for the loss of carrying capacity, as well as to create a modification of the ship with increased autonomy and even greater maneuvering capabilities.

The problem with the rocket was solved by transferring the engines of the second stage of the carrier (received the designation "Soyuz-U2") to the new high-energy synthetic hydrocarbon fuel "syntin" ("cycline").

The "cycline" version of the Soyuz-U2 launch vehicle flew from December 1982 to July 1993. Photo by Roscosmos

And the ship was redesigned, equipped with an improved propulsion system of increased reliability with an increased fuel supply, as well as new systems - in particular, the old rendezvous system ("Needle") was replaced with a new one ("Kurs"), which allows docking without reorienting the station. Now all targeting modes, including the Earth and the Sun, could be performed either automatically or with the participation of the crew, and the approach was carried out on the basis of calculations of the relative motion trajectory and optimal maneuvers - they were performed using the on-board computer using information from the Kurs system . For duplication, a teleoperator control mode (TORU) was introduced, which allowed, in the event of a failure of the Kurs, the astronaut from the station to take control and manually dock the spacecraft.

The ship could be controlled by a command radio link or by a crew using new on-board input and display devices. The updated communication system made it possible, during an autonomous flight, to contact the Earth through the station to which the ship was flying, which significantly expanded the radio visibility zone. The propulsion system of the emergency rescue system and parachutes were redesigned again (lightweight nylon was used for domes, and a domestic analogue of Kevlar was used for lines).

The draft design for the ship of the next model - 7K-STM - was released in April 1981, and flight tests began with the unmanned launch of the Soyuz TM on May 21, 1986. Alas, the station of the third generation turned out to be only one - "Mir", and it flew along the "old" orbit with an inclination of 51 °. But manned spacecraft flights, which began in February 1987, ensured not only the successful operation of this complex, but also the initial stage of the ISS operation.

When designing the above-mentioned orbital complex, in order to significantly reduce the duration of "blind" orbits, an attempt was made to create a satellite communication, monitoring and control system based on Altair geostationary relay satellites, ground-based relay points and corresponding on-board radio equipment. Such a system was successfully used in flight control during the operation of the Mir station, but at that time they still could not equip Soyuz-type ships with such equipment.

Since 1996, due to the high cost and lack of raw material deposits on Russian territory, the use of "sintin" had to be abandoned: starting with the Soyuz TM-24, all manned spacecraft returned to the Soyuz-U carrier. The problem of insufficient energy arose again, which was supposed to be solved by lightening the ship and modernizing the rocket.

From May 1986 to April 2002, 33 manned and 1 unmanned vehicles of the 7K-STM series were launched - all of them went under the designation Soyuz TM.

The next modification of the ship was created for operation in international missions. Its design coincided with the development of the ISS, more precisely with the mutual integration of the American Freedom project and the Russian Mir-2. Since the construction was supposed to be carried out by American shuttles, which could not remain in orbit for a long time, a rescue apparatus was constantly on duty as part of the station, capable of safely returning the crew to Earth in the event of an emergency.

The United States worked on the "space taxi" CRV (Crew Return Vehicle) based on the apparatus with the supporting body X-38, and the Rocket and Space Corporation (RKK) "Energy" (as the company eventually became known as the successor of the "royal" OKB-1 ) proposed a capsule-type ship based on a massively enlarged Soyuz descent vehicle. Both devices were supposed to be delivered to the ISS in the cargo compartment of the shuttle, which, in addition, was considered as the main means of crew flight from Earth to the station and back.

On November 20, 1998, the first element of the ISS was launched into space - the Zarya functional cargo block, created in Russia with American money. Construction has begun. At this stage, the parties carried out the delivery of crews on a parity basis - by shuttles and Soyuz-TM. The great technical difficulties that stood in the way of the CRV project, and a significant overrun of the budget, forced the development of the American rescue ship to be stopped. A special Russian rescue ship was also not created, but work in this direction received an unexpected (or natural?) continuation.

On February 1, 2003, the Columbia shuttle was lost while returning from orbit. There was no real threat of closing the ISS project, but the situation turned out to be critical. The parties coped with the situation by reducing the crew of the complex from three to two people and accepting the Russian proposal for permanent duty at the station of the Russian Soyuz TM. Then the modified Soyuz TMA transport manned spacecraft, created on the basis of 7K-STM within the framework of the previously reached interstate agreement between Russia and the United States, as an integral part of the orbital station complex, pulled up. Its main purpose was to ensure the rescue of the main crew of the station and the delivery of visiting expeditions.

According to the results of earlier flights of international crews on the Soyuz TM, the design of the new ship took into account specific anthropometric requirements (hence the letter “A” in the model designation): among American astronauts there are persons who are quite different from Russian cosmonauts in height and weight, moreover, both up and down (see table). It must be said that this difference affected not only the comfort of placement in the descent vehicle, but also the alignment, which was important for a safe landing when returning from orbit and required a modification of the descent control system.

Anthropometric parameters of the crew members of the Soyuz TM and Soyuz TMA spacecraft

Options	Soyuz TM	Soyuz TMA
1. Height, cm
. maximum standing	182	190
. minimal standing	164	150
. maximum sitting	94	99
2. Bust, cm
. maximum	112	not limited
. minimum	96	not limited
3. Body weight, kg
. maximum	85	95
. minimal	56	50
4. Foot length maximum, cm	-	29,5

The Soyuz TMA descent vehicle was equipped with three newly developed elongated seats with new four-mode shock absorbers, which are adjustable according to the cosmonaut's weight. The equipment in the areas adjacent to the seats was reconfigured. Inside the body of the descent vehicle, in the area of ​​the steps of the right and left seats, stampings about 30 mm deep were made, which made it possible to place tall astronauts in elongated chairs. The power set of the hull and the laying of pipelines and cables have changed, the zone of passage through the entrance manhole has expanded. A new control panel, reduced in height, a new refrigeration and drying unit, an information storage unit and other new or improved systems were installed. The cockpit, if possible, was cleared of protruding elements, moving them to more convenient places.

Controls and indication systems installed in the Soyuz TMA descent vehicle: 1 - commander and flight engineer-1 have integrated control panels (InPU) in front of them; 2 - numeric keypad for entering codes (for navigation on the InPU display); 3 — marker control unit (for navigation on the InPU display); 4 - block of electroluminescent indication of the current state of systems; 5 - manual rotary valves RPV-1 and RPV-2, responsible for filling the breathing lines with oxygen; 6 — electropneumatic valve for supplying oxygen during landing; 7 - the ship's commander observes the docking through the periscope "Vizir special cosmonaut (VSK)"; 8 - with the help of the motion control stick (THROT), the ship is given linear (positive or negative) acceleration; 9 - with the help of the orientation control knob (ORC), the ship is given rotation; 10 - fan of the refrigeration-drying unit (XSA), which removes heat and excess moisture from the ship; 11 - toggle switches for turning on the ventilation of spacesuits during landing; 12 - voltmeter; 13 - fuse box; 14 - button to start conservation of the ship after docking with the orbital station

Once again, the complex of landing aids was finalized - it became more reliable and made it possible to reduce the overloads that occur after descent on a reserve parachute system.

The problem of rescuing a fully staffed ISS crew of six was ultimately solved by the simultaneous presence of two Soyuz at the station, which since 2011, after the retirement of the shuttles, have become the only manned spacecraft in the world.

To confirm the reliability, a significant (at present) amount of experimental testing and mock-up with a control fitting of crews, including NASA astronauts, was carried out. Unlike the ships of the previous series, there were no unmanned launches: the first launch of the Soyuz TMA-1 took place on October 30, 2002 immediately with the crew. In total, until November 2011, 22 ships of this series were launched.

⇡ Digital Soyuz

Since the beginning of the new millennium, the main efforts of RSC Energia specialists have been aimed at improving the ship's on-board systems by replacing analog equipment with digital equipment made on a modern component base. The prerequisites for this were the obsolescence of equipment and manufacturing technology, as well as the cessation of the production of a number of components.

Since 2005, the enterprise has been working on the modernization of the Soyuz TMA in order to ensure that modern requirements for the reliability of manned spacecraft and crew safety are met. The main changes were made to the systems of motion control, navigation and on-board measurements - the replacement of this equipment with modern devices based on computing tools with advanced software made it possible to improve the operational characteristics of the ship, solve the problem of ensuring guaranteed supplies of key service systems, and reduce the mass and volume occupied.

In total, in the traffic control and navigation system of the ship of the new modification, instead of six old devices with a total weight of 101 kg, five new ones weighing about 42 kg were installed. Power consumption was reduced from 402 to 105 W, while the performance and reliability of the central computer increased. In the on-board measurement system, 30 old instruments with a total weight of about 70 kg were replaced by 14 new ones with a total weight of about 28 kg with the same information content.

In order to organize the control, power supply and temperature control of the new equipment, the control systems of the onboard complex and the thermal regime were accordingly finalized by performing additional improvements in the design of the spacecraft (the manufacturability of its manufacture was improved), as well as finalizing the communication interfaces with the ISS. As a result, it was possible to lighten the ship by about 70 kg, which made it possible to increase the ability to deliver payloads, as well as to further improve the reliability of the Soyuz.

One of the stages of modernization was worked out on the "truck" "Progress M-01M" in 2008. On an unmanned vehicle, which is in many ways analogous to a manned spacecraft, the obsolete airborne Argon-16 was replaced by a modern digital computer TsVM101 with triple redundancy, with a capacity of 8 million operations per second and a service life of 35 thousand hours, which was developed by the Submikron Research Institute ( Zelenograd, Moscow). The new computer uses the 3081 RISC processor (since 2011, the TsVM101 has been equipped with the domestic 1890BM1T processor). Also on board was installed new digital telemetry, a new guidance system and experimental software.

The first launch of the Soyuz TMA-01M manned spacecraft took place on October 8, 2010. In his cockpit there was a modernized Neptune console, made using modern computing tools and information display devices, featuring new interfaces and software. All spacecraft computers (TsVM101, KS020-M, console computers) are united in a common computer network - an onboard digital computer system that is integrated into the computer system of the Russian segment of the ISS after docking the spacecraft with the station. As a result, all Soyuz onboard information can get into the station's control system for control, and vice versa. This possibility allows you to quickly change the navigation data in the spacecraft control system in case it is necessary to perform a regular or emergency descent from orbit.

European astronauts Andreas Mogensen and Toma Peske practice the control of the Soyuz TMA-M spacecraft on the simulator. Screenshot from ESA video

The first digital Soyuz had not yet set off on its manned flight, and in 2009 RSC Energia approached Roscosmos with a proposal to consider the possibility of further modernization of Progress M-M and Soyuz TMA-M spacecraft. The need for this is due to the fact that obsolete Kvant and Kama stations were decommissioned in the ground-based automated control complex. The former provide the main control loop for the flight of spacecraft from the Earth through the Kvant-V on-board radio-technical complex, produced in Ukraine, the latter – the measurement of the parameters of the spacecraft’s orbit.

Modern "Unions" are controlled by three circuits. The first is automatic: the onboard system solves the control problem without outside intervention. The second circuit is provided by the Earth with the involvement of radio equipment. Finally, the third is manual crew control. Previous upgrades have provided updates to the automatic and manual circuits. The most recent stage affected radio equipment.

The onboard command system "Kvant-V" is being changed to a single command and telemetry system equipped with an additional telemetry channel. The latter will sharply increase the independence of spacecraft from ground control points: the command radio link will ensure operation through the Luch-5 relay satellites, expanding the radio visibility zone to 70% of the orbit duration. A new radio-technical rendezvous system "Kurs-NA" will appear on board, which has already passed flight tests on "Progress M-M". Compared to the former Kurs-A, it is lighter, more compact (including due to the exclusion of one of the three complex radio antennas) and more energy efficient. "Kurs-NA" is produced in Russia and is made on a new element base.

The ASN-KS satellite navigation equipment was introduced into the system, capable of working with both domestic GLONASS and American GPS, which will ensure high accuracy in determining the speeds and coordinates of the ship in orbit without involving ground-based measuring systems.

The transmitter of the Klest-M on-board television system was previously analog, now it has been replaced by digital, with video encoding in MPEG-2 format. As a result, the influence of industrial noise on the image quality has decreased.

The on-board measurement system uses a modernized information recording unit, made on a modern domestic element base. The power supply system has been significantly changed: the area of ​​photovoltaic converters of solar batteries has increased by more than one square meter, and their efficiency has increased from 12 to 14%, an additional buffer battery has been installed. As a result, the power of the system has increased and provides a guaranteed power supply to the equipment during the docking of the spacecraft with the ISS, even if one of the solar panels is not opened.

The placement of the approach and attitude engines of the combined propulsion system has been changed: now the flight program can be executed in the event of a failure of any one engine, and the safety of the crew will be ensured even with two failures in the subsystem of the approaching and attitude engines.

Once again, the accuracy of the radioisotope altimeter, which includes soft landing engines, has been improved. Refinements of the system for ensuring the thermal regime made it possible to exclude abnormal functioning of the coolant flow.

The communication and direction finding system has been upgraded, which allows using the GLONASS / GPS receiver to determine the coordinates of the landing site of the descent vehicle and transmit them to the search and rescue team, as well as to the Moscow Region Mission Control Center via the KOSPAS-SARSAT satellite system.

To the least extent, the changes affected the design of the ship: additional protection against micrometeorites and space debris was installed on the housing of the utility compartment.

The development of the upgraded systems has traditionally been carried out on a cargo ship - this time on the Progress MS, which launched to the ISS on December 21, 2015. During the mission, for the first time during the operation of the Soyuz and Progress, a communication session was carried out through the Luch-5B relay satellite. The regular flight of the "truck" opened the way to the mission of the manned Soyuz MS. By the way, the launch of the Soyuz TM-20AM on March 16, 2016 completed this series: the last set of the Kurs-A system was installed on the ship.

A video by the Roskosmos television studio describing the modernization of the systems of the Soyuz MS spacecraft.

⇡ Flight preparation and launch

Design documentation for the installation of Soyuz MS instruments and equipment has been issued by RSC Energia since 2013. At the same time, the manufacture of body parts began. The ship manufacturing cycle in the corporation is approximately two years, so the start of flight operation of the new Soyuz was in 2016.

After the first ship arrived at the factory control and testing station, for some time its launch was planned for March 2016, but in December 2015 it was postponed to June 21. At the end of April, the launch was pushed back by three days. The media reported that one of the reasons for the postponement was the desire to shorten the interval between the landing of the Soyuz TMA-19M and the launch of the Soyuz MS-01 "in order to make the work of the ISS crew more efficient." Accordingly, the Soyuz TMA-19M landing date was moved from June 5 to June 18.

On January 13, the preparation of the Soyuz-FG rocket began at Baikonur: the carrier blocks passed the necessary checks, and the specialists began to assemble the “package” (a bundle of four side blocks of the first and the central block of the second stages), to which the third stage was attached.

On May 14, the ship arrived at the cosmodrome, and preparations for launch began. Already on May 17, a message was passed on checking the automatic control system for orientation and berthing engines. At the end of May, Soyuz MS-01 was tested for leaks. At the same time, the propulsion system of the emergency rescue system was delivered to Baikonur.

From May 20 to May 25, the ship was tested for tightness in a vacuum chamber, after which it was transported to the assembly and test building (MIK) of site 254 for further checks and tests. In the process of preparation, malfunctions were discovered in the control system, which could lead to the spinning of the ship during docking with the ISS. The originally put forward version of a software failure was not confirmed during tests at the control system equipment stand. “Specialists updated the software, tested it on a ground simulator, but after that the situation has not changed,” said an anonymous source in the industry.

On June 1, experts recommended postponing the launch of Soyuz MS. On June 6, a meeting of the State Commission of Roscosmos, chaired by the First Deputy Head of the State Corporation Alexander Ivanov, took place, which decided to postpone the launch to July 7. Accordingly, the launch of the cargo "Progress MS-03" has shifted (from July 7 to July 19).

The backup circuit control unit was removed from the Soyuz MS-01 and sent to Moscow for software flashing.

In parallel with the equipment, the crews were also preparing - the main and backup. In mid-May, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, as well as their backups, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and ESA astronaut Toma Peske, successfully passed tests on a specialized simulator based on the TsF-7 centrifuge: the possibility of manually controlling the spacecraft’s descent was tested. simulation of overloads that occur during atmospheric entry. The cosmonauts and astronauts successfully coped with the task, "landing" as close as possible to the calculated landing point with minimal overloads. Then the planned trainings continued on the Soyuz MS simulators and the ISS Russian Segment, as well as classes on conducting scientific and medical experiments, physical and medical preparation for the effects of space flight factors and exams.

On May 31, in Star City, the final decision was made on the main and backup crews: Anatoly Ivanishin - commander, Kathleen Rubens - flight engineer No. 1 and Takuya Onishi - flight engineer No. 2. The backup crew included Oleg Novitsky - commander, Peggy Whitson - flight engineer No. 1 and Tom Peske - flight engineer No. 2.

On June 24, the main and backup crews arrived at the cosmodrome, the very next day they examined the Soyuz MS at the MIK of site 254, and then began training at the Test Training Complex.

The emblem of the mission, created by the Spanish designer Jorge Cartes (Jorge Cartes), is interesting: it depicts the Soyuz MS-01 approaching the ISS, as well as the name of the ship and the names of the crew members in the languages ​​of their native countries. The ship's number - "01" - is in large print, and a tiny Mars is depicted inside the zero, as a hint at the global goal of manned space exploration for the coming decades.

On July 4, the rocket with the docked spacecraft was taken out of the MIK and installed on the first platform (Gagarin Start) of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. At a speed of 3-4 km / h, the export procedure takes about one and a half. The security service prevented the attempts of the guests who were present at the export to flatten coins “for good luck” under the wheels of a diesel locomotive pulling a platform with a launch vehicle laid on the installer.

On July 6, the State Commission finally approved the previously planned prime crew of Expedition 48-49 to the ISS.

On July 7, at 01:30 Moscow time, the preparation of the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle for launch began. At 02:15 Moscow time, the cosmonauts, dressed in spacesuits, took their seats in the cockpit of the Soyuz MS-01.

At 03:59, a 30-minute readiness for launch was announced, the transfer of service columns to a horizontal position began. At 04:03 Moscow time, the emergency rescue system was cocked. At 04:08 there was a report on the completion of pre-launch operations in full and the evacuation of the launch crew to a safe area.

15 minutes before the start, to cheer up, Irkutam began broadcasting light music and songs in Japanese and English.

At 04:36:40 the rocket launched! After 120 seconds, the propulsion system of the emergency rescue system was reset and the side blocks of the first stage moved away. At 295 seconds of flight, the second stage departed. At 530 seconds, the third stage completed its work and the Soyuz MS was launched into orbit. A new modification of the veteran ship rushed into space. Expedition 48-49 to the ISS has begun.

⇡ Prospects for the Soyuz

This year, two more ships should be launched (Soyuz MS-02 flies on September 23 and Soyuz MS-03 on November 6) and two "trucks", which, according to the control system, are largely unmanned analogues of manned vehicles (July 17 - "Progress MS-03" and October 23 - "Progress MS-04"). Next year, three Soyuz MS and three MS Progress are expected to be launched. The plans for 2018 look about the same.

On March 30, 2016, during a press conference of the head of the State Corporation Roscosmos I. V. Komarov, dedicated to the Federal Space Program for 2016-2025 (FKP-2025), a slide was shown showing proposals for launching to the ISS during the specified period in a total of 16 IS Unions and 27 IS Progresses. Taking into account the already published Russian plans with a specific indication of the launch date until 2019, the plate is generally consistent with reality: in 2018-2019, NASA hopes to start flights of commercial manned spacecraft that will deliver American astronauts to the ISS, which will eliminate the need for such a significant number of Soyuz launches, as now.

Energia Corporation, under a contract with the United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC), will equip the Soyuz MS manned spacecraft with individual equipment for sending six astronauts to the ISS and returning to earth under a contract with NASA, the expiration date of which is December 2019.

The launches of the ships will be carried out by Soyuz-FG and Soyuz-2.1A launch vehicles (from 2021). On June 23, the RIA Novosti agency reported that the Roscosmos State Corporation announced two open tenders for the manufacture and supply of three Soyuz-2.1A rockets for launching Progress MS cargo ships (shipment deadline - November 25, 2017, initial price contract - more than 3.3 billion rubles) and two "Soyuz-FG" for manned spacecraft "Soyuz MS" (shipment deadline - until November 25, 2018, the maximum price for manufacturing and delivery - more than 1.6 billion rubles).

Thus, starting from the just completed launch, Soyuz MS becomes the only Russian means of delivery to the ISS and return of cosmonauts to Earth.

Ship variants for near-Earth orbital flights

Name	Soyuz 7K-OK	Soyuz 7K-T	Soyuz 7K-TM	Soyuz T	Soyuz TM	Soyuz TMA	Soyuz TMA-M	Soyuz MS
Years of operation	1967-1971	1973-1981	1975	1976-1986	1986-2002	2003-2012	2010-2016	2016-…
General characteristics
Home weight, kg	6560	6800	6680	6850	7250	7220	7150	-
Length, m	7,48
Maximum diameter, m	2,72
Span of solar panels, m	9,80	9,80	8,37	10,6	10,6	10,7	10,7	-
household compartment
Weight, kg	1100	1350	1224	1100	1450	1370	?	?
Length, m	3,45	2,98	310	2,98	2,98	2,98	2,98	2,98
Diameter, m	2,26
Free volume, m 3	5,00
Descent vehicle
Weight, kg	2810	2850	2802	3000	2850	2950	?	?
Length, m	2,24
Diameter, m	2,2
Free volume, m 3	4,00	3,50	4,00	4,00	3,50	3,50	?	?
Instrumentation compartment
Weight, kg	2650	2700	2654	2750	2950	2900	?	?
Fuel reserve, kg	500	500	500	700	880	880	?	?
Length, m	2,26
Diameter m	2,72

If you trace the entire fifty-year evolution of the Soyuz, you can see that all the changes that were not associated with a change in the “type of activity” mainly concerned the on-board systems of the ship and had relatively little effect on its appearance and internal layout. But attempts at "revolutions" were made, and more than once, but invariably stumbled upon the fact that such design modifications (associated, for example, with an increase in the size of the household compartment or descent vehicle) led to a sharp increase in related problems: a change in masses, moments of inertia and centering, as well as the aerodynamic characteristics of the ship's compartments, entailed the need for a complex of expensive tests and breakdown of the entire technological process, which since the late 1960s has involved several dozens (if not hundreds) of allied enterprises of the first level of cooperation (suppliers of instruments, systems , launch vehicles), causing an avalanche of costs in time and money, which may not have been paid off at all by the benefits received. And even changes that did not affect the layout and appearance of the Soyuz were made to the design only when a real problem arose that the existing version of the ship could not solve.

Soyuz MS will be the pinnacle of evolution and the last major modernization of the veteran ship. In the future, it will be subject to only minor modifications related to the decommissioning of individual devices, updating the element base and launch vehicles. For example, it is planned to replace a number of electronic units in the emergency rescue system, as well as adapt the Soyuz MS to the Soyuz-2.1A launch vehicle.

According to a number of experts, Soyuz-type ships are suitable for performing a number of tasks outside the Earth orbit. For example, a few years ago, Space Adventures (carried out marketing of space tourists visiting the ISS) together with RSC Energia offered tourist flights along the lunar trajectory. The scheme provided for two launches of launch vehicles. Proton-M was the first to launch with an upper stage equipped with an additional habitation module and a docking station. The second is Soyuz-FG with a "lunar" modification of the Soyuz TMA-M spacecraft with a crew on board. Both assemblies docked in near-Earth orbit, and then the upper stage sent the complex to the target. The ship's fuel supply was sufficient to make trajectory corrections. According to the plans, the journey took a total of about a week, giving tourists two or three days after the start the opportunity to enjoy the views of the Moon from a distance of a couple of hundred kilometers.

The finalization of the ship itself consisted primarily in strengthening the thermal protection of the descent vehicle to ensure safe entry into the atmosphere at the second cosmic velocity, as well as the refinement of life support systems for a week-long flight. The crew was supposed to consist of three people - a professional astronaut and two tourists. The cost of the "ticket" was estimated at $ 150 million. No one has yet been found ...

Meanwhile, as we remember, the “lunar roots” of the Soyuz indicate the absence of technical obstacles to the implementation of such an expedition on a modified ship. The question rests only on money. Perhaps the mission can be simplified by sending the Soyuz to the Moon using the Angara-A5 launch vehicle, launched, for example, from the Vostochny cosmodrome.

However, at present it seems unlikely that the "lunar" "Unions" will ever appear: the effective demand for such trips is too small and the costs for finalizing the ship for extremely rare missions are too high. Moreover, the Soyuz should be replaced by the Federation, a new generation manned transport ship (PTK NP), which is being developed at RSC Energia. The new ship accommodates a larger crew - four people (and up to six in case of emergency rescue from the orbital station) versus three for the Soyuz. The resource of systems and energy capabilities allow it (not in principle, but in the realities of life) to solve much more complex tasks, including flying into the circumlunar space. The design of the PTK NP is “sharpened” for flexible use: a ship for flights beyond low Earth orbit, a vehicle for supplying a space station, a rescue vehicle, a tourist apparatus or a system for returning cargo.

It should be noted that the latest modernization of Soyuz MS and Progress MS allows even now to use the ships as "flying test benches" for testing solutions and systems when creating the "Federation". So it is: the improvements made are among the measures aimed at creating the PTK NP. Flight certification of new instruments and equipment installed on the Soyuz TMA-M will make it possible to make appropriate decisions in relation to the Federation.

What to tell a child about Cosmonautics Day

The conquest of space is one of those pages in the history of our country that we can unconditionally be proud of. It is never too early to tell your child about this - even if your baby is only two years old, you can already do it together to "fly away to the stars" and explain that Yuri Gagarin was the first cosmonaut. But an older child, of course, needs a more interesting story. If you managed to forget the details of the history of the first flight, our selection of facts will help you.

About the first flight

The Vostok spacecraft was launched on April 12, 1961 at 9.07 Moscow time from the Baikonur cosmodrome, with pilot-cosmonaut Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin on board; Gagarin's call sign is "Kedr".

The flight of Yuri Gagarin lasted 108 minutes, his ship completed one revolution around the Earth and completed the flight at 10:55. The ship moved at a speed of 28,260 km/h at a maximum altitude of 327 km.

About Gagarin's assignment

No one knew how a man would behave in space; there were serious fears that once outside the home planet, the astronaut would go crazy with horror.

Therefore, the tasks that Gagarin was given were the simplest: he tried to eat and drink in space, made several notes with a pencil, and said all his observations aloud so that they were recorded on the onboard tape recorder. From the same fears of sudden madness, a complex system for transferring the ship to manual control was provided: the astronaut had to open the envelope and manually enter the code left there on the remote control.

About Vostok

We are accustomed to the appearance of a rocket - a grandiose elongated arrow-shaped structure, but all these are detachable stages that "fell off" after all the fuel was exhausted in them.

A capsule, shaped like a cannonball, with a third stage of the engine, flew into orbit.

The total mass of the spacecraft reached 4.73 tons, the length (without antennas) was 4.4 m, and the diameter was 2.43 m. The weight of the spacecraft together with the last stage of the launch vehicle was 6.17 tons, and their length in conjunction - 7.35 m

Rocket launch and model of the Vostok spacecraft

Soviet designers were in a hurry: there was information that the Americans planned to launch a manned spacecraft at the end of April. Therefore, it should be recognized that Vostok-1 was neither reliable nor comfortable.

During its development, they first abandoned the emergency rescue system at the start, then - from the soft landing system of the ship - the descent took place along a ballistic trajectory, as if the “core” capsule had really been fired from a cannon. Such a landing occurs with huge overloads - the cosmonaut is affected by gravity 8-10 times more than we feel on Earth, and Gagarin felt as if he weighed 10 times more!

Finally, they abandoned the backup brake installation. The latter decision was justified by the fact that when the spacecraft was launched into a low 180-200 km orbit, it would, in any case, leave it within 10 days due to natural deceleration on the upper atmosphere and return to earth. It was for these 10 days that the life support systems were calculated.

Problems of the first space flight

The problems that arose during the launch of the first spacecraft were not talked about for a long time, these data were published quite recently.

The first of them arose even before the launch: when checking the tightness, the sensor on the hatch, through which Gagarin entered the capsule, did not give a signal about the tightness. Since there was extremely little time left before the launch, such a malfunction could lead to the postponement of the launch.

Then the leading designer of Vostok-1, Oleg Ivanovsky, and the workers demonstrated fantastic skills, to the envy of the current Formula 1 mechanics. In a matter of minutes, 30 nuts were unscrewed, the sensor was checked and corrected, and the hatch was closed again in the proper way. This time the tightness test was successful, and the launch was carried out at the scheduled time.

At the final stage of the launch, the radio control system, which was supposed to turn off the 3rd stage engines, did not work. The engine shutdown occurred only after the backup mechanism (timer) was triggered, but the ship had already ascended into orbit, the highest point of which (apogee) turned out to be 100 km higher than the calculated one.

Departure from such an orbit with the help of “aerodynamic braking” (if the same, non-duplicate brake installation had failed) could take, according to various estimates, from 20 to 50 days, and not 10 days for which the life support system was designed.

However, the MCC was ready for such a scenario: all the air defenses of the country were warned about the flight (without details that the cosmonaut was on board), so that Gagarin was “tracked” in a matter of seconds. Moreover, an appeal was prepared in advance to the peoples of the world, with a request to search for the first Soviet cosmonaut, if the landing took place abroad. In general, three such reports were prepared - the second about the tragic death of Gagarin, and the third, which was published - about his successful flight.

During landing, the brake propulsion system worked successfully, but with a lack of momentum, so that the automation issued a ban on the standard separation of the compartments. As a result, instead of a spherical capsule, the entire ship entered the stratosphere, along with the third stage.

Due to the irregular geometric shape, for 10 minutes before entering the atmosphere, the ship tumbled randomly at a speed of 1 revolution per second. Gagarin decided not to frighten the flight leaders (first of all, Korolev) and, in a conditional expression, announced an emergency situation on board the ship.

When the ship entered the denser layers of the atmosphere, the connecting cables burned out, and the command to separate the compartments came from thermal sensors, so that the descent vehicle finally separated from the instrument-propulsion compartment.

If the trained Gagarin was ready for 8-10-fold overloads (they still remember the shots with the centrifuge from the Flight Training Center!) Was ready, then for the spectacle of the burning skin of the ship when entering the dense layers of the atmosphere (the temperature outside during the descent reaches 3-5 thousand degrees ) - No. Through two windows (one of which was located on the entrance hatch, just above the astronaut's head, and the other, equipped with a special orientation system, in the floor at his feet), streams of liquid metal flowed, and the cabin itself began to crackle.

The descent vehicle of the Vostok spacecraft in the museum of RSC Energia. The lid, separated at a height of 7 kilometers, fell to Earth separately, without a parachute.

Due to a small failure in the braking system, the descent vehicle with Gagarin landed not in the planned area 110 km from Stalingrad, but in the Saratov region, not far from the city of Engels near the village of Smelovka.

Gagarin ejected from the ship's capsule at an altitude of one and a half kilometers. At the same time, he was almost carried directly into the cold waters of the Volga - only vast experience and composure helped him, controlling the parachute lines, land on land.

The first people who met the astronaut after the flight were the wife of a local forester, Anna Takhtarova, and her six-year-old granddaughter, Rita. Soon the military and local collective farmers arrived at the scene. One group of military men guarded the descent vehicle, while the other group took Gagarin to the location of the unit. From there, Gagarin reported by phone to the commander of the air defense division: “I ask you to convey to the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force: I completed the task, landed in a given area, I feel good, there are no bruises or breakdowns. Gagarin.

For about three years, the leadership of the USSR hid two facts from the world community: firstly, although Gagarin could control the spacecraft (by opening the envelope with the code), in fact, the entire flight took place in automatic mode. And the second is the very fact of Gagarin's ejection, since the fact that he landed separately from the spacecraft gave the International Aeronautical Federation a reason to refuse to recognize Gagarin's flight as the first manned space flight.

What Gagarin said

Everyone knows that before the start, Gagarin said the famous "Let's go!" But why "let's go"? Today, those who worked and trained side by side remember that this word was a favorite sentence of the famous test pilot Mark Gallai. He was one of those who prepared six candidates for the first flight into space and during training asked: “Ready to fly? Well then, come on. Go!"

It's funny that only recently they published a record of Korolev's pre-flight conversations with Gagarin, already sitting in a spacesuit, in the cockpit. And no wonder, there was nothing pretentious, Korolev, with the caringness of a loving grandmother, warned Gagarin that he would not have to starve during the flight - he had more than 60 tubes of food, he had everything, even jam.

And very rarely they mention the phrase said on the air by Gagarin during the landing, when the porthole was flooded with fire and molten metal: "I'm on fire, goodbye, comrades".

But for us, probably, the most important thing will remain the phrase said by Gagarin after landing:

“Having circled the Earth in a satellite ship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, we will preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it.”

Prepared by Alena Novikova

"First Orbit" is a documentary film by English director Christopher Riley, filmed for the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's flight. The essence of the project is simple: the cosmonauts photographed the Earth from the ISS at the moment when the station most accurately repeated Gagarin's orbit. The full original recording of Cedar's conversations with Zarya and other ground services was superimposed on the video, the music of the composer Philip Sheppard was added and moderately seasoned with solemn messages from radio announcers. And here is the result: now everyone can see, hear and try to feel how it was. How (almost in real time) the world-shaking miracle of the first manned flight into space took place.

April 12, 1961 at 9:07 Moscow time, a few tens of kilometers north of the village of Tyuratam in Kazakhstan at the Soviet Baikonur Cosmodrome, an intercontinental ballistic missile R-7 was launched, in the nose compartment of which the Vostok manned spacecraft with Air Force Major Yury was located Alekseevich Gagarin on board. The launch was successful. The spacecraft was launched into an orbit with an inclination of 65°, a perigee altitude of 181 km and an apogee altitude of 327 km, and completed one revolution around the Earth in 89 minutes. On the 108th minute after launch, he returned to Earth, landing near the village of Smelovka, Saratov Region.

The Vostok spacecraft (SC) was created by a group of scientists and engineers led by the founder of practical astronautics, S.P. Korolev. The spacecraft consisted of two compartments. The descent vehicle, which was also the cosmonaut's cabin, was a sphere 2.3 m in diameter, covered with an ablative (melting when heated) material for thermal protection during atmospheric entry. The spacecraft was controlled automatically, as well as by the astronaut. During the flight, radio contact with the Earth was continuously maintained. An astronaut in a spacesuit was placed in an aircraft-type ejection seat equipped with a parachute system and communications equipment. In the event of an accident, small rocket motors at the base of the chair fired it through a round hatch. The ship's atmosphere is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen at a pressure of 1 atm (760 mm Hg).

The manned compartment (descent vehicle) was attached to the instrument compartment with metal straps. All equipment not directly required in the descent vehicle was located in the instrument compartment. It contained life support system cylinders with nitrogen and oxygen, chemical batteries for the radio installation and instruments, a brake propulsion system (TDU) to reduce the speed of the spacecraft during the transition to the descent trajectory from orbit, and small orientation thrusters. "Vostok-1" had a mass of 4730 kg, and with the last stage of the launch vehicle 6170 kg.

The calculation of the trajectory of the return of the Vostok spacecraft to Earth was carried out using a computer, the necessary commands were transmitted to the spacecraft by radio. The attitude thrusters provided the appropriate angle of entry of the spacecraft into the atmosphere. Upon reaching the desired position, the braking propulsion system was turned on, and the speed of the ship decreased. Then the pyrobolts tore apart the tie-down bands connecting the descent vehicle with the instrument compartment, and the descent vehicle began its "fiery dive" into the Earth's atmosphere. At an altitude of about 7 km, the entrance hatch fired back from the descent vehicle and the seat with the astronaut ejected. The parachute opened, after a while the chair was dropped so that the astronaut would not hit it when landing. Gagarin was the only Vostok cosmonaut who remained in the descent vehicle until landing and did not use the ejection seat. All subsequent cosmonauts who flew on Vostok spacecraft ejected. The descent vehicle of the Vostok spacecraft landed separately on its own parachute.

SCHEME OF THE SPACESHIP "VOSTOK-1"

"Vostok-1"
1 Antenna of the command radio link system.
2 Communication antenna.
3 Cover for electrical connectors
4 Entrance hatch.
5 Food container.
6 Tie-down straps.
7 Ribbon antennas.
8 Brake motor.
9 Communication antennas.
10 Service hatches.
11 Instrument compartment with main systems.
12 Ignition wiring.
13 Cylinders of pneumatic system (16 pcs.)
for the life support system.
14 Ejection seat.
15 Radio antenna.
16 Porthole with optical orientation.
17 Technological hatch.
18 Television camera.
19 Thermal protection made of ablative material.
20 Block of electronic equipment.

This ship had two main compartments: a descent module with a diameter of 2.3 m and an instrument compartment. The control system is automatic, but the astronaut could transfer control to himself. With his right hand, he could orient the ship using a manual control device. With his left hand, he could turn on the emergency switch, which reset the access hatch and actuated the ejection seat. A cutout in the nose fairing of the launch vehicle allowed the astronaut to leave the ship in the event of a launch vehicle failure. When the spherical descent vehicle returned to the atmosphere, its position was automatically corrected. With increasing air pressure, the descent vehicle occupied the correct position.

Launch vehicles
The 2 ½-stage Vostok launch vehicle was based on a Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile.
Its height together with the spacecraft is 38.4 m.
"Mercury-Atlas", which is also a modification of an intercontinental ballistic missile, had a total height of 29 m.
Both rockets are fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene.

The Vostok spacecraft was launched into space 5 times, after which it was declared safe for human flight. Between May 15, 1960 and March 25, 1961, these spacecraft were launched into orbit under the name of the satellite ship. They housed dogs, mannequins and various biological objects. Four of these devices had returnable capsules with astronauts' chairs mounted in them. Three have been returned. The last two apparatuses of the series, before entering the atmosphere, performed like Vostok-1, one orbit around the Earth each. Others completed 17 turns, like Vostok-2.