Science
Related: About this forumSpacemen 'flew blind' from space station as sensors failed
The three crew of the International Space Station (ISS) who returned to Earth this week endured a hair-raising descent after their height sensors failed, a Russian cosmonaut revealed on Friday.
Pavel Vinogradov said that he and the two other crew of the Soyuz capsule which touched down in Kazakhstan Wednesday had groped their way through the landing after they lost all data about their height from the ground.
"There were problems. For some reason after the undocking all our parameters disappeared. Essentially, after the undocking, we flew blind," he said at the Star City cosmonaut training centre outside Moscow, quoted by Russian news agencies.
He said that the only data the crew could receive about their approach to the earthcrucial for knowing when to fire the engines to soften the landingcame from the salvage team on the ground.
He said the rescue teams were able to radio to the crew that they were 300 metres (1,000 feet) and then 100 metres (330 feet) from the ground in the Soyuz capsule, which lands vertically with the help of a parachute after reentering the atmosphere.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-spacemen-flew-space-station-sensors.html#jCp
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Good thing they didn't end up like, I think, Vokshod 2... Leonov and the other guy way off target in the middle of a frozen Siberian forest surrounded by Hungry animals for about a day or so.
Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)lastlib
(23,266 posts)Russian spacecraft come down on land--they screw up their landing, and they're greasy spots on the ground, picked up with a sponge......Glad they got down safely!