News Archive

On February 18 at the Baikonur cosmodrome, the prelaunch preparation of a space rocket with the satellite "Egyptsat-A" began. The launch of the satellite is scheduled for Thursday, February 21, 2019, at 19:47 Moscow time. The "Egyptsat-A" satellite is designed for imaging of the Earth’s surface with high resolution and was created in the interests of the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt.

On February 15, the GCTC was visited by the delegation of the Italian Embassy, headed by the Italian Ambassador in Russia Pasquale Terracciano. During the visit, the development of cooperation between the Italian Air Force and the Cosmonaut Training Center was discussed. During the excursion, Pasquale Terracciano and the embassy staff visited the halls of "Soyuz" spacecraft, Russian segment of the ISS, Space Center, "Exit-2" simulators and the "CF-18" centrifuge.

Having successfully passed the exams on manual control of transport manned and cargo spaceships, the main crew of the ISS this Monday continued to pass the "space" exams. The working week of "Soyuz MS-12" commander Alexey Ovchinin and flight engineer Nick Hague began with the manual-controlled descent exam on the TC-7 simulator, based on the CF-7 centrifuge base. Taking into account that Alexey and Nick passed such exam on the Soyuz spacecraft several months ago as part of "Soyuz MS-10" crew training, the high level of their knowledge and skills during the training was rated by the commission as “excellent”. The examination week of the main crew of the ISS continued with a test of knowledge of the Russian segment of the International Space Station. The two-week training sessions for the main crew of the ISS were the final training for the complex exams, which are to be held by Alexey Ovchinin, Nick Hague and Christina Koch after one week.

Despite the strong wind and snow, not only the Star City residents and the staff of the GCTC came to greet the crew of the 56/57 expedition to the ISS, but also the leaders of the rocket and space industry enterprises, as well as the ambassadors of the United States and Germany in Russia John Huntsman and Rüdiger von Fritsch. The crew members of the "Soyuz MS-09" (call name "Altai") Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Prokopiev, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and NASA astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor returned to Earth safely on December 20, 2018 after performing a 196-day flight. Ambassadors of the United States and Germany, representatives of related organizations of the rocket and space industry, foreign space agencies, municipalities and other associations, cosmonauts colleagues warmly welcomed the crew, handing memorable addresses and gifts. At the end of the meeting, the crew of the ISS-56/57 thanks all those, who were involved in their flight.

The management of the GCTC, under the leadership of the head of the Center Pavel Vlasov, met with the delegation of the Moscow Aviation Institute (National Research Institute) (MAI) under the leadership of Rector Mikhail Pogosyan to discuss the possibilities and areas for further cooperation. The main objective of the meeting held in the GCTC was to increase the level of training, conduct joint research and improve the training and test base. As a result of the meeting, it was decided to establish working groups for the development of a “roadmap” of cooperation. MAI is a leader among civilian universities in the number of graduates, who have become cosmonauts and specialists in the rocket and space industry.

Petr Levochkin, chief designer of NPO "Energomash, designer and manufacturer of the famous "RD-180" family of engines, commented on the PR statement of Elon Musk about the “superiority” of "Raptor" engine, created by SpaceX: “The SpaceX company creates the "Raptor" engine on oxygen and methane components or, as is customary in the Russian classification, the gas-gas scheme. In such schemes, such a pressure level in the combustion chamber is not something extraordinary - in our designs for these schemes we lay down the pressure level in the chamber over 300 atmospheres. However, Mr. Musk, not being a technical specialist, does not take into account that the "RD-180" engine for the Atlas launch vehicle uses a completely different fuel circuit - “oxygen-kerosene”, and these are another parameters of the engine operation. It is like comparing a diesel and a gasoline internal combustion engine. Despite the fact, that our companies are competitors, we as engineers welcome the first successes of colleagues from SpaceX in the field of rocket engine building. Indeed, during the development of the Raptor engine, American engineers reached a record pressure level in the chamber. This indicates a fairly high level of development and production processes at SpaceX. ”

Customers, launching small devices and devices of the "Kubsat" type weighing from 1 kg to 120 kg on Russian "Soyuz-2" rockets will be able to quickly find out the preliminary cost of launching into orbit using a specially developed calculator on the Glavkosmos Lauch Services website. The calculator for calculating the launch price of the devices allows you to get a price quote for launching the spacecraft within 1 business day, which allows customers to quickly plan missions and receive regular updates in terms of questions of interest. The calculator is a convenient solution, that gives the customer the opportunity to plan launches comfortably and quickly, directly from the operator of the "Soyuz-2" launch vehicle from the Russian cosmodromes - Glavkosmos Launch Services.

Today, at the GCTC has completed experimental studies on the development of interactions between the cosmonaut and the anthropomorphic robot, which is controlled in a teleoperator mode. The goal was to develop a standard technique, that could be further replicated for various studies. The experiment equipment includes a screen, a projector, automated workplaces of the experiment support team. Now it is exploring an anthropomorphic robot, created by the NPO "Android Technics", with which the GCTC has been cooperating for a long time. But in the future, the interaction of cosmonauts with any other space robots will be tested here.

After passing the theoretical exams, the ISS crew started practical tests on simulators. The commander of the "Soyuz MS" spacecraft Alexey Ovchinin successfully passed the exam on a specialized simulator "Teleoperator", the purpose of which is to work out the modes of manual telecontrol of the approach and docking from the ISS of the transport cargo ship"Progress MS". And today, the ISS crew members-Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague passed the exam on the "Don-Soyuz" specialized simulator, where one of the main elements of the crew's practical training for the flight takes place.

A quarter of a century ago, on February 3, 1994, the "Discovery" shuttle was launched under the STS-60 program. It is significant, because for the first time a Russian cosmonaut flew on an American spacecraft. It was Sergey Krikalev, for whom STS-60 was the third expedition in his career. The flight duration was 8 days 7 hours. STS-60 went down in history as the first joint Russian-American launch.