The Russian Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft, known by its US designation of 28S, undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) and landed safely in Kazakhstan Friday morning after a five and a half month stay in space, carrying three crewmembers of the ISS crew back to Earth and beginning the Expedition 31 mission aboard the station.<\/p>\n
Soyuz TMA-22 background:<\/p>\n
The Soyuz TMA-22\/28S spacecraft launched to the ISS on 14th November last year, with a docking to the ISS at the Mini Research Module-2 (MRM-2) Zenith port two days later on 16th November, delivering American astronaut Dan Burbank, and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin to the ISS to serve on the Expedition 29 and 30 missions.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Z325.jpg\" "\\"Z3\\"")
The launch \u2013 which was the first crewed launch since the retirement of the Space Shuttle last July and the first crewed launch since the failure of the Progress M-12M spacecraft last August \u2013 put an end to fears of a need to decrew the ISS in light of the grounding of the Soyuz booster after the August Progress failure.<\/p>\n
The Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft is also the last in the line of TMA (200 series) variant Soyuzes, as all Soyuzes hereafter will be of the newer TMA-M (700 series) variant, AKA \u201cdigital\u201d Soyuzes. Thus, when Soyuz TMA-22 leaves space Friday morning, it will mark the last time that the venerable TMA variant of the Soyuz is in space.<\/p>\n
Despite arriving at the ISS roughly one and a half months late due to delays associated with the August Progress M-12M failure, Soyuz TMA-22 will still be departing the ISS after the usual duration of five and a half months on-orbit, since the spacecraft\u2019s stay on the ISS was extended by roughly one and a half months due to delays relating to the accidental overpressurisation of Soyuz TMA-22\u2019s replacement vehicle \u2013 Soyuz TMA-04M\/30S.<\/p>\n
The Soyuz TMA-22 landing was scheduled for 30th April, but was moved forward three days to the 27th April due to upcoming Russian holidays.<\/p>\n
Undocking and landing:<\/p>\n
Rocket building kits (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n After saying goodbye to their crewmates remaining on the ISS, the three Soyuz TMA-22 crewmembers entered their spacecraft a few hours prior to undocking. Following which the removal of docking clamps holding the Soyuz onto the ISS, followed by hatch closure between the Soyuz and ISS, the depressurisation and subsequent leak checks of the vestibule between the two hatches was conducted.<\/p>\n The Soyuz TMA-22 crew \u2013 in their Sokol launch and entry suits \u2013 then strapped into the Descent Module for landing.<\/p>\n Soyuz TMA-22 \u2013 flown by Soyuz Commander Anton Shkaplerov and Soyuz Flight Engineers Anatoly Ivanishin and Dan Burbank \u2013 then conducted a 15 second separation burn to place the spacecraft on a trajectory away from the ISS.<\/p>\n Around two and a half hour later, during which time the ISS will maneuver back to its normal attitude, Soyuz TMA-22 conducted a roughly four and a half minute de-orbit burn at 10:49 AM GMT, placing the spacecraft on a sub-orbital trajectory with its perigee (lowest point) inside Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n The next event came at 11:18 AM GMT, with tri-module separation of the Soyuz\u2019s Orbital Module (BO), Descent Module (SA) and Instrumentation & Propulsion Module (PAO). Entry interface into Earth\u2019s atmosphere will occurred three minutes later at 11:21 AM GMT, during which Soyuz TMA-22\u2019s SA protected its precious cargo of humans and experiment downmass from the fiery heat of re-entry.<\/p>\n Following nine minutes of re-entry, parachute deployment occurred at 11:30 AM GMT, followed finally by landing 11:45 AM GMT near the town of Araklyk in Kazakhstan. The crew will then later be extracted from the Soyuz and flown by helicopter to a nearby airfield, with the Soyuz TMA-22 crew then parting ways after six months together, with Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin heading by aircraft to Moscow, and American Dan Burbank doing a \u201cdirect return\u201d to Houston, Texas via a NASA aircraft.<\/p>\n Click here for ISS News Articles: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/tag\/iss\/<\/p>\n Hardware replacements and modifications:<\/p>\n In the past few days, a couple of hardware replacements and modifications have been made to the Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft in order to get it ready to depart the ISS. During a recent Kazbek couch fit check, a standard procedure conducted before all Soyuz landings, Ivanishin noted that he was having difficulty fitting into his customised seat liner, a problematic issue for landing since the seat liners help cushion crewmembers from the impact of touchdown.<\/p>\n As such, the crew were asked to reduce the thickness of the foam at the top of the head and around the hip area of the seat liner, using the \u201cmakita electric jig saw, a serrated knife, regular knife, hand hacksaw, cutter and lots of US grey tape\u201d, in order to improve the fit.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, another fit check was performed to verify the issue is now resolved, this time using a ruler to measure clearances.<\/p>\n Expedition 31 begins:<\/p>\n As soon as Soyuz TMA-22 undocks from the ISS, Expedition 30 will end and Expedition 31 will begin, with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko as ISS Commander, having assumed command from Dan Burbank earlier this week, and American astronaut Don Pettit and European astronaut Andr\u00e9 Kuipers as Flight Engineers.<\/p>\n Despite being at three crew operations until the Soyuz TMA-04M\/30S spacecraft arrives on 17th May with three additional Expedition 31 crewmembers \u2013 Russians Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin, and American Joe Acaba \u2013 the three-person Expedition 30 crew will nevertheless be extremely busy over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n While the current schedule calls for Dragon to launch and berth to the ISS prior to the Soyuz TMA-04M launch, if SpaceX deicide they need more time to fully test Dragon\u2019s complex software, NASA may decide to wait until after the Soyuz TMA-04M launch and docking to launch the Dragon \u2013 meaning Dragon would arrive at the ISS will a full crew of six aboard the station.<\/p>\n In addition to the first ever visit of a commercial spacecraft to the ISS, other tasks for Expedition 31 include the usual heavy schedule of scientific research activities aboard the station, along with standard systems maintenance and repairs. Expedition 31 will end with the undocking and landing of Soyuz TMA-03M\/29S on 1st July.<\/p>\n (Images: L2\u2019s ISS and Russian Sections \u2013 Containing presentations, videos, images, interactive high level updates and more, with additional images via NASA, CSA and NASA TV). <\/p>\n (Click here: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/l2\/ \u2013 to view how you can access the best space flight content on the entire internet).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Russian Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft, known by its US designation of 28S, undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) and landed safely in Kazakhstan Friday morning after a five and a half month stay in space, carrying three crewmembers of the ISS crew back to Earth and beginning the Expedition 31 mission aboard the station. Soyuz […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[233,1302],"class_list":["post-40143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-iss","tag-soyuz"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40143"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Z424.jpg\" "\\"Z4\\"")
Handover of ISS attitude control to the Russian Segment (RS) of the ISS was conducted, maneuvering the ISS under Russian Service Module (SM) control to the undocking attitude (90 degrees pitch up from LVLH), along with the issuing of the ISS free drift command, allowing Soyuz TMA-22 to undock from the MRM-2 Zenith port at 8:15 AM GMT.<\/p>\nSee Also<\/h4>\n
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\nThe first, performed on Tuesday, related to the KhSA Cooler\/Dehumidifier Assembly fan box inside the Descent Module, which on 15th March had deactivated, thus requiring it to be Removed & Replaced (R&Rd) for undocking and landing. Steps included removal of the old fan box and installation of a new one in its place, hooking up cables to the new fan box, and telemetry checkouts.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Z516.jpg\" "\\"Z5\\"")
The second modification, also performed on Tuesday in the Descent Module, related to the Anatoly Ivanishin\u2019s personal seat liner for his Kazbek couch \u2013 specifically the headrest and lower section.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Z3111.jpg\" "\\"Z311\\"")
As currently scheduled \u2013 as much as the date remains only a No Earlier Than (NET) date \u2013 the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is set to launch on its inaugural flight to the ISS on 7th May, for a capture and berthing to the ISS three days later on 10th May \u2013 to be performed by Don Pettit and Andr\u00e9 Kuipers. As such, both Pettit and Kuipers will be busy over the coming weeks brushing up on their \u201ctrack and capture\u201d skills using onboard robotics simulators.<\/p>\n