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Spaceship Has Hard, Fast Landing
A commission at the Energia Corp. began an investigation yesterday into the cause of the failure of the landing computer on the Soyuz TMA 10 less than two minutes after entering the Earth's atmosphere on Sunday. The computer switched the spacecraft to an uncontrolled ballistic descent, radically increasing the acceleration factor experienced by the cosmonauts aboard from 3-4 units (when the weight of the cosmonaut exceeds his mass on Earth by 3-4 times) to 8.5 units. In addition, the craft landed 346 km. off target.
It took two Air Force rescue helicopters only eight minutes to reach the craft, and another ten minutes to remove the cosmonauts from it. Doctors say that Russian cosmonauts Fedor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov and Malaysian citizen Sheikh Muzsaphar Shukor survived the landing without complications. The Russian had been in orbit 196 days.
This is the second time a TM craft has had a ballistic landing. The first time was on May 4, 2003, on the TM 1 with one Russian and two Americans on board. They experienced an acceleration of 9 units and landed 460 km. off target. That was also due to a computer failure. The Soyuz craft are currently the only means by which crewmembers on the International Space Station can return to Earth. The landing problem of the TM 10 will not effect the docking of the TM 11 with the space station. Cosmonauts are trained for ballistic landings.
Experts say the modernization of the Soyuz should improve the reliability of the landing program. In 2010, Soyuz craft will be made with a new central computer, with will take over the functions of the special landing computer.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 23, 2007
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