A Russian military satellite nearly collided with a Korean weather satellite earlier this week.
This is both good and bad: Russia appears to lack enough available rockets to fulfill its 2011 launch plans.
Meanwhile, up on ISS two Russians have successfully completed a five hour spacewalk, getting all their work done early.
Astronauts on the Russian Mars500 simulated Mars mission simulated a Mars landing on Saturday. Key quote:
Three astronauts on the Mars500 simulated mission will make a simulated walk on the Mars “surface” Monday. After working 30 days on the simulated planet, the crew will then embark on a simulated 240-day return trip to Earth. Officials said the 520-day Mars500 mission is designed to test how humans cope with the physical and mental stresses of a long space flight.
Wait ’til next year! The Russian effort to drill into Lake Vostok buried under the Antarctica icecap has fallen short by only a hundred feet, stopped by the end of summer.
Secrets of the Soviet N1 Moon rocket.
If you’re interested, seats are available for a tourist trip around the moon in a Soyuz capsule. And the Russians say the Soyuz is ready to go!
The crew of a simulated 500 day long Mars mission has reached “Mars orbit” after 8 months of confinement in a facility in Russia.
Russia regains contact with missing military satellite, finds that it was placed in the wrong orbit.
A monument to Boris Yeltsin was unveiled today in his hometown on the 80th anniversary of his birth.
In this week of memorials to American space tragedies, this event in Russia brings to mind the far more important and significant events, affecting millions of people worldwide, that unfolded in the Soviet Union during the late 1980s and mid-1990s. The communist superpower was collapsing, and there was the real possibility that that collapse could lead to worldwide war and violence.
Yeltsin, far more than any other man, helped shepherd the former Soviet Union out of that chaos, and he did it as a civilized man, with relatively little bloodshed. As he shouted defiantly as he stood on a tank in front of the Russian parliament building on the day of the August coup, “Terror and dictatorship . . . must not be allowed to bring eternal night!”
Unlike many former communist leaders, Yeltsin had the openness of mind to recognize that the state-run centralized command society that he had grown up in and had helped run for years simply did not work. “We have oppressed the human spirit,” he noted sadly during a press conference shortly after the coup. More importantly, he also had the courage to take action on this realization, and force the painful changes that were necessary to save his country.
Yeltsin was no saint, and the Russian transition from dictatorship to freedom was far from perfect. No one even knows if that transition is going to hold, today, twenty years later. Nonetheless, the world should remember Yeltsin for his success, and honor that memory.
Russia loses contact with newly launched military satellite.
Another freighter, this time from Russia, docks with ISS.
How’s this for your evening television entertainment: Beginning 8 pm on Saturday, NASA TV will show the docking of the next Russian Progress freighter to ISS.
A new deal has been announced to fly tourists to ISS using Russian Soyuz capsules. According the arrangement between Space Adventures and the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation (FSA) and Rocket Space Corporation Energia (RSC Energia), three seats will be made available on Soyuz spacecraft bound for the International Space Station (ISS), beginning in 2013.
These seats will be made available through the increase of Soyuz production, from four to five spacecraft per year. Each flight will be short duration, approximately 10 days, and will contribute to the increase of launch capacity to the ISS.
The bright outlook in 2011 for Russia’s space industry.
Two old unused Soviet Almaz space stations have been sold to a private company and have arrived in their new home on the Isle of Man. Key quote:
The stations will be initially stored in Jurby, but there plans for research, testing and possible launch into orbit.
For those who do not know, the Almaz station was built in the 1970s by the Soviet Union to do manned military reconnaissance. Two manned Almaz stations were eventually flown, Salyut 3 and Salyut 5. The station hull itself became the fundamental module for all subsequent Soviet/Russian stations, including Mir and ISS.
Russian space officials are fired over rocket failure.
The Soyuz capsule, carrying the next crew to the International Space Station, has docked safely with the station.
This is more a kerfuffle in the press than a real emergency: for about three hours today Russian mission control had problems communicating with either ISS or the Soyuz spacecraft that is on its way to it. Neither spacecraft was in any danger during the down time.
At least the Russians can still do this: At 2:09 pm (Eastern) today a Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off, carrying the next crew to the International Space Station.
Engineers say that the cause of the Russian rocket failure yesterday appears to have been a programming error.
Bad news for the Russian space industry: A Proton rocket, carrying three Russian Glonass navigation satellites (their version of our GPS) failed at launch, crashing into the Pacific.
Three astronauts from ISS landed safely in Kazakhstan this morning. Meanwhile, the next crew contingent passed its exams in Russia.
This week the Russians will give “final exams” to the main and backup crews for the next expedition to ISS.
Though NASA constantly rates its astronauts, it does not give them “exams.” This whole procedure (as well as how this Russian article is written) gives a nice flavor of the cultural differences between the U.S. and Russia.
Is this real, or a call for funding? The Russian space company Energia says it will begin work next year on nuclear engines for Russia’s space program.
Except for the failure to install a video camers, two Russian astronauts successfully completed a six hour spacewalk on ISS today, doing a variety of construction tasks on the station’s exterior.
The Baikonur space port: a movie set.
Because of damage sustained during the railroad trip from Russia to Kazakhstan, the Russians are flying in a replacement descent module for the Soyuz capsule scheduled for launch to ISS on December 13.
The December Soyuz flight to ISS will be delayed due to the damage the capsule received during its transport by rail to Baikonur.
The container used to ship a Soyuz capsule to Baikonur was damaged in transport. No word yet on the condition of the capsule, which was scheduled for a December launch to ISS.
