March 26, 2014

Soyuz TMA-12M with new ISS mission crew comprised by Alexander Skvortsov, Oleg Artemyev (Roscosmos) and Stephen Swanson (NASA) was successfully launched from “Gagarin” launchpad of Baikonur spaceport with the help of Soyuz-FG booster.

At 01.26 the spacecraft separated from booster’s third stage and entered near-Earth orbit, the crew felt weightlessness.

Onboard the station the crew will accomplish a wide range of scientific experiments in accordance with the program, work with Russian Progress and European ATV-5, American Orbital-2, Space X-4 and Dragon and Japanese HTV-5 Kounotori cargo vehicles, perform photo and video shooting, keep space blog, during one of the spacewalks the cosmonauts are going to launch Peru miscrosatellite and besides cosmonaut Skvortsov will celebrate his birthday onboard the station for the second time in his life.

The cosmonauts stay onboard the ISS for about 169 days.

ISS-39 mission crew members (Mikhail Tyurin, Koichi Wakata and rick Mastracchio) are already waiting for their colleagues.

The docking of the spacecraft with the ISS was firstly scheduled for 07.04 Moscow time but later it was postponed by 2 days since instead of short 6-hours rendezvous scheme the previous 2-days one will be used.

“No off-nominal situation, the crew feels well”, – Roscosmos representative reported . The docking was postponed due to the fact that onboard computer failed to issue command for Soyuz attitude control jets ignition. This won’t affect the crew members. Spacecraft computers will be rebooted, ballistics specialists recalculate the orbit, and the spacecraft will be oriented to the ISS, thrusters will be ignited and new crew will finally reach the ISS, – the spokesman stated.

After computer rebooting Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft will perform maneuver to form new ISS approaching orbit trajectory, – MCC representative said.

In the nearest time we’ll give a command to perform this maneuver. Control jets ignition won’t affect the crew.

According to preliminary data the docking is scheduled for March 28, 03.58 Moscow time.
Final maneuver on spacecraft orientation will take place on Friday.

According to Roscosmos the crew feels well, environment parameters are normal.

More from this category:
August 1, 2013

According to the contract signed in late July, Lavochkin Association will develop a special adapter enabling to set CubeSat class nanosatellites into the orbit by…

full story
June 5, 2014

Space specialists go on working in accordance with the ISS program at Baikonur spaceport. RSC Energia specialists started preparing next manned spacecraft Soyuz TMA-14M for…

full story
May 28, 2014

Yesterday on May 27,2014 State commission on Manned Space Complex flight tests meeting took place in “Cosmonaut” complex at #17 launching pad of Baikonur spaceport….

full story
May 24, 2018

Russian President Vladimir Putin invited former deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin to head the state corporation ”Roskosmos”. Putin’s meeting with Rogozin took place in the…

full story
October 25, 2019

At NPO “Energomash” (part of Roscosmos State Corporation), the commission successfully accepted the next batch of RD-180 liquid rocket engines, manufactured at the enterprise. Representatives…

full story
July 8, 2019

At the Baikonur cosmodrome, specialists from the RSC “Energia” and other Roscosmos enterprises completed refueling operations on the “Soyuz MS-13” spacecraft with fuel components and…

full story
March 15, 2021

The Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center offers a specialized TS-18 manual control descent simulator based on the TsF-18 centrifuge. The simulator enables cosmonaut training to control…

full story
June 2, 2014

The preparation of the next manned spacecraft for the ISS flight has started in the integration building of 245 launchpad of Baikonur spaceport. Soyuz TMA-14M…

full story