Soyuz TMA-16M successfully launched to the ISS

Onboard the ship are space record holders

March 15, Baikonur, Kazakhstan, (left to right) American Scott Kelly and Russians Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko pose against the backdrop of the spacecraft on which they are to fly to the ISS. NASA / Victor Zelentsov

A few minutes ago, the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle successfully launched the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft to the International Space Station. On board are two Russian cosmonaut and astronaut of the US space agency NASA.

The launch was planned from the 1st Gagarin site of Baikonur at 10:42 pm Moscow time. Soyuz will use the fast four-turn scheme, that is, it will dock to the small research module “ Search ” already six hours after launch from the Earth, on March 28 at 04:36 Moscow time. The usual scheme takes two days.


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The most experienced member of the crew is Gennady Padalka, he spent 710 days in space and performed nine spacewalks. Padalka is piloting a ship, and during his stay on the ISS, he will break the record for the duration of Sergei Krikalev. Padalka will be the Earth record holder in terms of the total time spent in space - 878 days. As the cosmonaut himself stated at the pre-flight press conference, he has a dream to reach a figure of a thousand days. In October, Padalka will return to Earth with Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen and space tourist Sarah Brightman.

But the focus is on other crew members. Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko will spend almost a year in orbit, they will return to the planet only on March 3, 2016 in the descent vehicle of the Soyuz TMA-18M. Because of this, Kelly and Kornienko will have to transfer the lodgements from one ship to another - they are created individually for a specific person in order to minimize the impact effect of landing the Soyuz capsule. It is impossible to use the same "Soyuz" for the delivery and return of the annual crew - the ships will not have enough resources for this.



Annual flight is a special experiment to identify the long-term biological effects of space flight . NASA maintains the intention to land a man on the surface of Mars, so it is necessary to get an answer to many questions: how much muscular and bone mass is lost, how dangerous is cosmic radiation, how the general mood changes under microgravity conditions, and so on. Scott Kelly is great for this purpose because he has a twin brother . This simplifies the process of comparing health and physiological parameters. For example, to obtain data on aging, it is sufficient to simply compare the telomere length of Scott and Mark. This is also the first annual flight for a NASA astronaut; the Russian side already has this experience.

During the flight, Kornienko and Kelly will conduct 19 medical and biological experiments . Among them - " Moving liquids ." Under microgravity conditions, the fluid in the human body moves upward, without experiencing the usual pressure of gravity of the Earth, this process is exaggeratedly illustrated in the image on the left. For the experiment, the Gamma-1M complex will be used to record the ECG in twelve leads, the Chibis-M pneumatic vacuum suit to create negative pressure in the lower body and the video camera. The information obtained will help determine the direction of the development of preventive measures and treatment regimens - the idea will be tested whether it is possible to temporarily block the phenomena of fluid movement by changing the direction of movement of liquid media to the opposite. This is just one of the many negative factors of long-term flight . Previous flights of near-water duration have been carried out for a long time, and today medicine and technology have leaped far ahead and make it possible to better assess the state of the human body at the station, Kornienko said .

Probably, Scott Kelly took with him a commemorative patch that is designed to bring him good luck. In October last year, at launch, the Antares launch vehicle and payload in the form of a private space truck Cygnus exploded . The investigation included a search for the surviving objects among the wreckage, and so a piece of the form for Kelly was found - a badge with the name of an astronaut in English and Russian. Kelly jokes that the probability of hitting this patch in another such incident is negligible. Among other features of the attributes of this flight, it is worth noting the absence of the usual hanging toy inside the “Union” - several GoPro cameras are located in the cockpit, which were obstructed by the swinging object.

In case of an emergency landing, about 20 military and civil aircraft and helicopters, as well as the ship of the search and rescue service of the Russian Navy, insure the flight. The Russians Aleksey Ovchinin, Sergey Volkov and the astronaut Jeffrey Williams acted as the backup crew of the Soyuz TMA-16M. Now the Russian Antonin Shkaplerov, the Italian Samantha Cristoforetti and Terry Werts, who will stay on the ISS until May 11, are waiting for the ISS replenishment. On the morning of March 12, Alexander Samokutyaev, Barry Wilmore and Elena Serova returned to Earth in the descent capsule of the Soyuz TMA-14M, and from that moment on the ISS there were three people instead of the usual six.


The logo of the annual mission of Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko, NASA

Kelly and Kornienko will conduct in orbit twice the size of the normal crew of the ISS. Over the year, they will see how 3 Soyuz TMA-M spacecraft arrive at the station, with them astronauts and cosmonauts, as well as one space tourist Sarah Brightman, her flight duration will be 10 days. The adaptation of an inexperienced person to microgravity should be monitored, on the other hand, this is a British singer and an interesting person who can diversify life in orbit, Kornienko said . Most of all, an astronaut will miss the nature of the Earth: forests, fields, rivers. In preparation for the flight, Kornienko and Kelly talked with Vladimir Titov, who has experience of annual flight. As Kelly stated, Titov advised him not to overwork on the ISS.