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YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

December 17, 2008

India’s manned space flight under cooperation with Russia

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has announced that India, who sent Chandrayaan-1 to moon, is planning India’s first manned flight to send their astronauts to moon by re-designing Russian manned spaceship Soyuz. When President Medvedev of Russia visited India the other day, Memory of Understanding on mutual cooperation about manned space flight was exchanged between President Anatoli Perminov of Federation Space Agency and Chairman Madhavan Nair of ISRO.

Soyuz is three-seated manned spacecraft ever been used since 1967, and is now engaged in transporting American astronauts to and from International Space Station after through several improvements of the vehicle. It was officially decided that Soyuz would take Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi to ISS at the end of next year for his stay onboard ISS from December 2009 to May 2010.

http://kibo.jaxa.jp/mission/exp/news/noguchi_issnum.html

Present type of Soyuz is called “Soyuz TM” improved from “Soyuz T”. Several improvements were made on its functional system such as docking, rendezvous, communication with ground control center and emergency landing. Materials for fuselage structure were strengthened in intensity and heat-insulating materials covering fuselage were made lighter. Soyuz is not only serviceable for transportation to and from ISS but also quite useful as a lifeboat at the time of emergency escape.

Images:http://www.skyrocket.de/space/doc_sdat/soyuz-tm.htm

http://www.spaceref.com/iss/spacecraft/soyuz.tm.html

Specification:

http://www.linkclub.or.jp/~nasa-nbl/myself/myspace5.html

You can see the interior of Soyuz from the URL below:

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?p=8521

Below is photo gallery of Soyuz TM:

http://www.astronautix.com/gallery/csoyuztm.htm

Indian government is said to have approved the development plan of sending two Indian astronauts to let them stay in space for about one week for a time being.

I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.
matogawa@planetary.or.jp

(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)