Latest Soyuz Stories
The Russian space program suffered yet another setback on Friday after a Soyuz-2 vehicle failed to put a communications satellite into orbit, resulting in debris from the probe crashing back to Earth in a Siberian town located roughly 1,400 miles from Moscow. According to BBC News Science Correspondent Jonathan Amos, the Soyuz 2.1b (described by Amos as the most modern form of the venerable Russian spaceship) launched at 16:08 Moscow time from the Plesetsk spaceport in northern Russia....
HOUSTON, Dec. 19, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Just in time for the holidays, the residents of the International Space Station will welcome three new crew members. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit, Russian Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers of the Netherlands are set to launch in their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 7:16...
A Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off this weekend from French Guiana’s Sinamary spaceport, only the second time a Soyuz rocket has ever lifted off from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) new launch facility in South America. The rocket carried six low-orbit military-industrial satellites into space, including France’s Pleiades 1 satellite, designed to generate 3D and color images for both military and industrial use. The satellite has been designed to take pictures on the ground as small...
The launch of ESA’s IXV Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle on Europe’s new Vega rocket is now in detailed planning, a major step towards the craft’s flight in 2014. Launched into a suborbital trajectory from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, IXV will return to Earth as if from a low-orbit mission, to test and qualify new critical technologies for future reentry vehicles. It will attain an altitude of around 450 km, allowing it to reach a velocity of 7.5 km/s on entering the...
The integration of Vega’s first, second and third stages is now complete at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The new rocket is moving full speed ahead towards its maiden flight at the end of January. The first Vega launch campaign began in November with the installation and testing inside the mobile gantry of the hundred-ton solid-propellant first stage, the P80, and the Interstage-1/2 structure that links the first two stages. The booster’s final acceptance included testing...
ESA astronaut André Kuipers is now officially ready for liftoff on 21 December: he and his crewmates have passed their final exams and left for the launch site Thursday. Along with André’s plane, his PromISSe mission blog also took off Thursday. Every crew destined for the International Space Station must endure two days of final exams in the simulators at Star City near Moscow before they are cleared for flight. And it is not a formality — they have to show they can control their...
EVRY, France, Dec. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- O3b Networks Limited, the developer of a new global, high-speed, satellite-based internet network for telecommunications operators and ISPs, has exercised the first of the two options in its contract with Arianespace for an additional launch in 2014 for the O3b Networks' satellite constellation. By exercising this option, O3b has allocated a total of three launches of 12 satellites to Arianespace. The first eight O3b satellites are...
Fresh off the arrival of three new crew members at the International Space Station, the next trio of residents is set to launch to the outpost Dec. 21. NASA Television will cover prelaunch activities, launch and docking to the orbital laboratory during the next several weeks. Expedition 30 NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Russian Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers are scheduled to launch at 7:16 a.m. CST on Dec. 21 (7:16 p.m. local time) from...
Flight Director Brian Smith called off planning to shelter the Expedition 30 crew in their Soyuz spacecraft after flight controllers evaluated tracking data on the Fengyun 1C satellite debris and concluded it poses no threat to the International Space Station. Consideration was given for sheltering the crew in their Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft after initial tracking information indicated a high probability of the debris colliding with the station. But further tracking data confirmed that the...
[ Watch the Video ] Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut docked successfully with the International Space Station (ISS), in the first manned Russian mission in more than five months, and the first for the US since the retirement of NASA’s shuttle program. “The ship docked at 09:24 Moscow time. Everything went ahead normally,” a Russian space agency spokesman told AFP. The rocket launched from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in...
Latest Soyuz Reference Libraries
Frank De Winne is a Belgian Air Component officer and an ESA astronaut. He was born Frank Viscount De Winne on April 25, 1961 in Ledeberg, Belgium. He is married to Lena Clarke and has three children from a previous marriage. He enjoys football, concerts, and gastronomy. In 1979, he graduated from the Royal School of Cadets, and in 1984, he graduated from the Royal Military Academy with a Master of Science degree in Engineering. In 1991, after graduating from the Belgian Air Component at...
Valery Bykovsky was a Soviet cosmonaut who flew three manned space mission space flights: Vostok 5, Soyuz 22, and Soyuz 31. He was born Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky on August 2, 1934 in Pavlovsky Posad in Moscow. In 1951, he graduated from middle school and entered Kachinsk's Myasnikov High Aviation School. After graduation in 1955, he served with the Soviet Air Force. In 1960, Bykovsky was accepted into the Soviet cosmonaut unit and then underwent the full space preparation course and...
Ivan Bella is a Slovak Air Force officer who became the first Slovak citizen to fly in space. He was born on May 25, 1964 in Brezno, Czechoslovakia. He graduated from Banská Bystrica, a military high school, in 1983. He earned his pilot license, and he then went to a Military Aviation University SNP, where he graduated in 1987. In 1993 he was stationed to serve on the 33rd air base flying Mig-21 and Su-22 fighters. Five years later he headed to Russia for space mission training. In August...
Georgy Beregovoy was a Soviet cosmonaut who commanded the space mission Soyuz 3 in 1968. He was born Georgy Timofeyevich Beregovoy on April 15, 1921 in Fedorivka, Ukrainian SSR. In 1941, he joined the Soviet air force and was assigned to a ground-attack unit flying the Ilyushin Il-2. He flew almost 200 combat raids during the World War II and became a Captain and Squadron Commander by the end of the war. Following the war, he became a test pilot and rose to the rank of Colonel and Deputy...
International Space Station -- Continuing on from the United States' Skylab and Russia's Mir, the International Space Station (ISS) represents a permanent human presence in space. The space station is located in orbit around the Earth at an altitude of approximately 386 km, a type of orbit usually termed low Earth orbit. (The actual height varies over time by several kilometres due to atmospheric drag and reboosts.) It is serviced primarily by the Space Shuttle, and Soyuz and...
