Last week, eight future cosmonauts, together with the test-training brigade of the Yu.A. Gagarin returned to Star City, completing the second stage of special parachute training (SPPK) on the basis of the Menzelinsky branch of the autonomous non-profit organization Central Aero Club of the Republic of Tatarstan DOSAAF of Russia.
For three weeks in the skies over Menzelinsky, the cosmonaut candidates demonstrated their psychological stability and physical readiness for the chosen profession. In accordance with the schedule of the second stage of training, each test cosmonaut candidate made 40 parachute jumps. The training program included 6 exercises of different difficulty levels.
One of them is a jump to practice the skills of complexly combined activity when approaching a moving “target” in free fall conditions. The instructor performs the role of the moving target, and two cosmonauts, separated from the aircraft, perform the exercise of approaching it.
At the same time, the trainees necessarily conduct a report, assess the distance from each other, the relative speed of approach, the values of height and time. At 1,200 meters from the ground, the cosmonauts and the instructor move away from each other at a safe distance (at least 20-30 m) and open their parachutes. In this way, students learn to make decisions under conditions of strong emotional stress and a rapidly changing environment, preparing the psyche for intense activities during space flight.
The goal of another compulsory exercise included in the 2020 special parachute training program is to train an astronaut flying towards the ground at speeds up to 250 km / h to work with additional information. These can be special logical problems or psychological tests.
After landing, the work does not end. The cosmonauts, together with an instructor and a psychologist who is part of the brigade, analyze audio recordings, analyzing the actions to the smallest detail. It is noteworthy that three cosmonaut candidates at once (Oleg Platonov, Sergei Mikayev and Alexander Grebenkin) celebrated their first parachute anniversaries in the skies over Menzelinsk. During the training camp, each of them had a hundredth jump. By tradition, this significant moment, together with the cosmonaut, is celebrated by the entire parachute training instructor.
Congratulations take place in the sky: instructors of the Cosmonaut Training Center gather next to the “hero of the day” and build a formation, holding hands for several seconds in free fall. In memory of the jump, a soft toy souvenir from the instructors remains, which, in tandem with the astronaut, lands at the designated place.
The result of the 2020 parachute camps is the competent and professional implementation of the special parachute training program. Cosmonaut candidates, under the guidance of experienced instructors, mastered jumping from a height of four thousand meters, learned how to solve information search problems in free fall, and report on all stages of a parachute jump. And the main thing that everyone who returned from the training camp received was self-confidence, the ability to concentrate and work purposefully in stressful conditions.
