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

Solar Sail

Today, September 7, a special day for a great nation, Brazil celebrated its independence from Portugal. More than half a century ago good winds brought the Portuguese to this beautiful land, where everything that seeds, rises, we were blessed with a tropical climate which gives us the brigadier skies all year, in addition to several miles of coastline and other natural beauties.
This was only possible thanks to the invention of the Portuguese caravels, which is an adaptation of the triangular sail set on the Mediterranean Sea region.

In twenty-first century man is still sailing, but now he is sailing on other the seas far greater than any man can dream for half a century ago. I'm talking about the vastness of Space. Currently there are several consolidated technologies: propulsion liquid, solid and there are others still in development as the ion and, more recently, the technology that leverages the solar wind.

Today I talk a little about the Solar Sail its history and its operating principle.

The idea of using solar wind for propulsion is not new, the operating principle is based on the pressure caused by solar radiation and solar wind pressure itself focusing on a surface, and this can absorb or reflect radiation. And it was proven by a Russian scientist Peter Lebedev that when a surface absorbs radiation instead of reflecting it generates twice as much traction.
Thus the proposed designs for solar sail today has been based in large "parachute" for that can absorb more radiation and then have more traction, but it brings us some problems in low orbit around 800km altitude for example the spacecraft suffers the drag caused by air. Above this altitude the solar sail gradually got smaller accelerations and can take months or years to reach the desired speed.

Despite the limitations, the Japanese space agency JAXA has obtained the first proven success in this type of technology with the launch of IKAROS after two frustrated attempts of other agencies both caused by faults in the rocket launch the project of NASA and the Russian COSMO1 the project NanoSail D.

Now the question is whether this technology will progress and allow us to reach new worlds, new lands wonderful as the Portuguese did half a century ago! That the solar wind to guide us beyond the solar system!