Spacecraft Soyuz

Dear readers, today at dawn Soyuz Spacecraft carrying two cosmonauts and an astronaut landed successfully in Kazakhstan, after the postponement caused by a possible short circuit that caused a false alarm preventing Russian spacecraft to perform the maneuver with the decoupling Russian module of the ISS.

Continuing the posts on manned spacecraft will be talking today about the Russian spacecraft Soyuz. This Russian Soyuz spacecraft is considered the most secure and robust spacecraft ever built in the history. Its origins began in the ex-USSR when the Russians needed a spaceship to replace the Vostok spacecraft, the new ship should be able to perform maneuvers in space in addition to performing docking with other ships, these requirements were necessary for a landing on the surface lunar possible.

In the competitive atmosphere of the moon space race, the first tests of the Soyuz took place in 1966, the first manned flight took place in 1967 with cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov and this should be coupled with another Soyuz craft that would be launched later, but due to some technical problems the launching of second Soyuz was canceled. And the landing occurred a tragedy due to malfunction at the opening of the parachute, the spacecraft crashed into the ground at high speed killing Komarov. After this catastrophe a series of unmanned flights were conducted to verify the reliability of the system. In 1968 they returned to carry out human spaceflight.

The Soyuz spacecraft had several upgrades during their lifetime in the earlier Soyuz 1 - Soyuz 9 (1966-1970) was designed for the space race to the moon. After the defeat of the Soviets came Soyuz-10 - Soyuz T-14 which aimed to integrate the cosmonauts to the first space station built by man, the space station Salyut, soon after came the era of Soyuz TM developed to carry cosmonauts to the MIR space station , they received several enhancements as computerized flight control system and also improved the emergency escape, finally the Soyuz TMA that has been developed to meet international requirements to carry astronauts to the ISS (International Space Station). But until today no Soyuz spacecraft is reusable like the American space shuttle.

In October this year will launch a new version of the Soyuz TMA-01M which will be the first Soyuz spacecraft to use digital control systems.

The Russians are developing for years that the spacecraft will definitely replace the Soyuz, this is known as Kliper due to financial problems but has suffered several delays.

Technical characteristics of the Soyuz-TMA:

Mass: 7230 kg
Payload: 880 Kg
Diameter: 2.72m
Length: 7.48 m
Wingspan: 10.7 m