Soyuz - A Veteran Spacecraft Trivia Quiz

Answer: union

Union, described the original mission of the spacecraft which was to demonstrate rendezvous and docking procedures and serve as the centrepiece of a potential Soviet manned moon mission. Soyuz was developed by Sergei Korolev's OKB-1 design bureau and given the designation 7K.

Answer: Baikonur

Soyuz spacecraft are launched from Baikonur in the central Asian republic of Kazakhstan using the original launch pad that Yuri Gagarin used on the first Vostok mission and another one nearby. During the cold war, in order to mislead Western intelligence agencies, the launch site was referred to as Baikonur which was in fact a town 370 km away. The West referred to the site as Tyuratam which was that particular region of Kazakhstan. Over the years a town called Leninsk grew up nearby to support the facility but the launch site was still referred to as Baikonur by official sources. In 1995 it was ordered that the town Leninsk be renamed Baikonur so it now appears there are two towns called Baikonur in Kazakhstan, the original, which never had anything to do with the facility, and the renamed town of Leninsk. Confused! So am I.
Kaputsin Yar and Plesetsk are launch sites in Russia for unmanned satellites.
Star City is the facility north east of Moscow where preparation, training, and de-briefing of manned space missions takes place.

Answer: R-7

The R-7 launch vehicle is based on the original booster which placed Sputnik in orbit and which itself was a modified Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) design. RD-107 is the designation of the engines for the four strap on boosters of the R-7 and the RD-108 is the engine that powers the central core stage of the launch vehicle.

In the west the vehicle has been given various designations like 'Soyuz booster' and 'A2'.

Answer: 1967

The Soyuz programme got off to an inauspicious start when Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was tragically killed at the end of the first mission in April 1967. A planned launch of Soyuz 2 to serve as a rendezvous target and conduct a crew transfer by Extravehicular Activity (EVA) was cancelled when Komarov encountered difficulties immediately after entering orbit. One of the solar arrays failed to deploy and orientation difficulties with the largely untested spacecraft prevented the onboard batteries from being recharged.

It was decided to terminate the mission on the 19th orbit and Komarov manually oriented Soyuz 1 and initiated the re-entry burn. The craft survived a less than ideal ballistic re-entry but recovery crews found the capsule engulfed in flames and belching black smoke when they arrived on the scene.

The remains of Komarov were later recovered from the capsule. Subsequent investigations revealed he had been killed on impact after a double failure of the main parachute and backup chute to deploy and the subsequent fire was caused when the terminal braking rockets, which are designed to fire 1.5 m from the ground, were still firing when the craft struck the ground at high speed, burning through the heat shield and destroying the craft.

It was also revealed the Soyuz 2 suffered from the same design flaw and would have suffered a similar fate if it had been launched greatly compounding the tragedy with the probable loss of all four Cosmonauts. Political considerations had played a part in the decision to launch the only partially tested Soyuz as the Soviets had been unable to respond to the string of successful Gemini missions and hoped to pre-empt the upcoming Apollo programme. The original flight objective was finally accomplished by the Soyuz 4-5 joint mission in January 1969.

Answer: Descent Module DM

The Descent Module is the only part of Soyuz that is recovered and is occupied by the crew during the launch and recovery phases of a mission. It is shaped like a car headlight with a heat shield at the base and parachute stowage canister at the apex and is mounted on top of the Propulsion Module.

The Orbital Module is mounted on top of the DM and there is a hatch between the two modules for crew access with both modules being pressurised. The OM provides habitation facilities, storage, EVA access, and serves as a transfer compartment to a second spacecraft during orbital activities.

The Propulsion Module is unpressurised and contains the retro engines, fuel tanks, batteries, consumables and other instrumentation. The OM and PM are jettisoned before re-entry.

The whole assembly is enclosed by an aerodynamic shroud topped by a launch escape system which is jettisoned late in the launch sequence on leaving the atmosphere. Cosmonauts in the Vostok programme like Yuri Gagarin ejected from their craft and landed by parachute a fact which was not revealed at the time of their missions.

Answer: 7000 Kg

Soyuz has only had a modest growth in the mass over 40 years ranging from 6800 Kg for the early versions to 7200 Kg for the latest TMA version. This consists of 2800 Kg for the DM, 1200Kg for the OM and 2560 Kg for the PM.

Answer: Zond

The unmanned Zond 4 - 8 circumlunar missions were flown between 1967 and 1969. They consisted of a Descent Module and modified Propulsion Module and were tests for a moon mission, which was to loop around the moon and test re-entry procedures at high velocities.

These tests were one of the reasons which prompted NASA to launch the ambitious Apollo 8 mission in Dec 1968 which pre-empted this possible Soviet first when it orbited the moon 10 times on only the second Apollo mission.

Answer: True

Solar panels provided power for the original Soyuz missions from 1 to 9 between 1967 and 1970. These missions demonstrated docking concepts with mixed success. Solar panels were discarded for Soyuz missions which were ferry flights to the series of Salyut space stations launched during the 1970's and early 80's.

These missions required only a short period of independent flight which could be supported by chemical storage batteries and the weight saved could be used to ferry more supplies and consumables to the stations. Solar panels were re-introduced with the Soyuz T which first flew with a crew in 1980.

Answer: True

This is true and the change required that crews be reduced from three to two in order to fit the suited up cosmonauts into the rather cramped confines of the DM. The crew of Soyuz 11, Georgi Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev, were found dead in their seats by shocked recovery teams after they had completed a highly successful 23 day mission to the Salyut 1 space station.

The tragedy was traced down to a faulty decompression valve which was jarred open as the DM and OM separated after the retrofire burn to initiate re-entry.

The valve was only supposed to be activated to equalise pressures when the DM was in the atmosphere and descending under its parachute. It was estimated the crew died 50 seconds after the failure of the valve, a fate that could have been avoided if they had been wearing spacesuits.

It appears they turned off the radio transmitters in order to locate the air leak which would have been audible and by the time they traced it to the faulty valve which was located under Dobrovolsky's seat they were already incapacitated by the rapid decompression. Tragically the leak could probably have been stopped by placing a finger over the faulty valve. Three person crews were reintroduced for the efficient operation of the later Salyut and MIR space stations with the advent of Soyuz T in 1979.

Answer: It was forced to splashdown in a frozen lake

Cosmonauts Vyacheslav Zudov and Valeri Rozhdestvensky in Soyuz 23 were forced to abort their attempted docking to Salyut 5 due to the R-7 booster placing them in a lower than planned orbit. Power supplies were limited now that there were no solar panels to recharge the batteries so they were ordered to return at the first opportunity. Unfortunately it was night time and there were high winds and blizzards in the recovery area, far from ideal conditions.

The re-entry sequence was normal but as the crew braced themselves for the final retro-rocket firing and thud as they hit the ground the crew were surprised when they splashed down in the half frozen shallow waters of Lake Tengiz.

They were over 8 km from the nearest shore and the parachute dragged the capsule over on its side. With the exit hatch half submerged and the decompression valve under water the crew could not open the hatch without flooding the vehicle and sinking.

There were only limited oxygen supplies on board with no access to outside air because of the submerged decompression valve. Recovery crews could not locate them because of the blizzard, the dark, and the locator beacon on the capsule was also submerged. One helicopter finally found them by chance but could do nothing in the prevailing conditions.

A chapter of errors ensured before a heavy lift Mi-8 helicopter was located the next morning. After much difficulty a line was attached to the capsule and it was dragged to shore trailing its waterlogged parachute, a highly unorthodox procedure. When they reached the shore a clearly distressed Rozhdestvensky managed to open the hatch 11 hours after landing. Both cosmonauts had managed to survive a truly remarkable ordeal!

Answer: A launch abort narrowly avoided an emergency landing in Chinese territory

The mission became known as the 'April 5 anomaly' in the language official Soviet understatements of the time and the crew were scheduled to spend 60 days on the Salyut 4 space station. The R-7 booster was an older model and lifted off the pad normally with the four strap-on boosters separating 120 seconds later followed by the escape tower and aerodynamic shroud.

However when the core stage was depleted it did not separate as planned from the second stage which then ignited. With the second stage firing with the core stage still attached the automatic systems detected the aberrations and the abort sequence was initiated.

The Soyuz separated from the aberrant booster and began its emergency descent sequence. The surprised cosmonauts soon felt themselves returning to earth and had to endure a bone crushing 14-15 g during this emergency descent. Makarov feared they might be descending into Chinese territory and as there was high tension between the Soviet Union and China at that time he feared the worst. Ground control had been tracking the flight and had determined that Soyuz would clear Chinese territory and land in a rugged region of western Siberia but they had no way of informing the crew who were either incapacitated or otherwise occupied by the emergency.

The craft landed on the side of a snow covered mountain and began to slide down the slope before the parachute snagged on scrub and stopped it just before a sheer 500 ft drop. The flight had lasted just 21 min, reached an altitude of 192 km to qualify as a spaceflight and landed 1574 km downrange from the launch site. Ground crews quickly located the craft but there were more dramas before the crew was rescued with the original rescue team having itself to be rescued after they were buried in an avalanche. The shaken crew crawled from the capsule into biting -7 degree temperatures and chest deep snowdrifts, managing to don their survival gear and made camp before being rescued the next morning. The crew, having no way of being sure where they had landed, burned documents relating to the flight plan in case they fell into Chinese hands.

Answer: The launch escape system was activated on the launch pad

Titov and Strekalov, scheduled to be the next resident crew of Salyut 7, were in the final stages of countdown when a fuel valve at the base of the R-7 booster failed to close and fuel was spilled onto the pad. Within a minute a fire had started and began to engulf the booster with its 270 tonnes of propellant.

The launch crew watched the fire in dismay but Titov and Strekalov knew something was amiss from the tense exchanges however they could not see anything through the portholes because Soyuz was still enclosed by its aerodynamic shroud.

The wiring to automatically activate the launch escape was burned through and it took several vital seconds to manually activate the backup system which needed two independent controllers in separate rooms to send a command within 15 seconds of each other. Pyrotechnic devices explosively separated the Soyuz from the R-7 and the escape tower simultaneously ignited with the crew being pulled clear for the ride of their lives. Within 3 seconds the cosmonauts had reached Mach 1 vertically and had been subjected to 14-17 g with the booster exploding 6 seconds after the capsule had been pulled clear.

After the escape rocket burned out the four aerodynamic panels on the side of the shroud deployed slowing the ascent. A second set of pyrotechnic connectors fired separating the OM from the DM which then dropped clear from the base of the shroud, deployed the reserve parachute and dropped off the heat shield to expose the soft landing engines which fired 1.5 m from the ground. The dazed cosmonauts survived a somewhat harder landing than normal and landed 4 km from the pad. This was the first and only time in the Russian and American manned space programmes that the launch escape system was used in a real emergency.

Answer: Progress

Progress uses Soyuz subsystems with the major difference being the substitution of an unpressurised cargo module for the DM. Typically it can deliver about 1000 Kg of propellant in the cargo module and about 1500 Kg of dry cargo in the pressurised OM which is docked to the Space station. Progress first flew to Salyut 6 in 1978 and since then over 120 Progress, Progress M and Progress M 1, unmanned supply ferries have been launched to Salyut 6, Salyut 7, Mir and the International Space Station (ISS).

Answer: 1975

The ASTP mission also known as 'The handshake in space' took place in July 1975. Cosmonauts Alexi Leonov and Valeri Kubasov in Soyuz 19 were launched first followed a day later by Astronauts Tom Stafford, Vance Brand, and Deke Slayton in the very last Apollo spacecraft. Soyuz was the passive target for Apollo, which rendezvoused and docked the next day using a newly designed universal docking mechanism.

The Docking Module (DM) contained a special airlock to facilitate crew transfers between the two craft which had incompatible atmospheres. Apollo had a low pressure oxygen rich atmosphere while Soyuz operated with a normal air mixture at atmospheric pressure.

This complicated any crew transfers between the vehicles necessitating the development of the DM to avoid crews developing the bends when moving from one vehicle to the other.

After 2 days of joint activities the craft undocked and practiced rendezvous manoeuvres alternating active and passive roles. Apollo remained in orbit for five days after Soyuz returned, conducting an independent flight programme.

The flight had more significance politically as technically it was regarded as a dead end. In Russia the mission is referred to as the Soyuz-Apollo Experimental Flight (EPAS).

Answer: Soyuz TMA

Soyuz TMA (Transport, Modification, Anthropometric) spacecraft were introduced in 2002 to ferry crews to and from the ISS and have the ability to remain attached to the station for 180 days where they can be activated at minimal notice and act as an escape vehicle during an emergency.

A system of vehicle exchanges has been developed where new resident crews bring up a fresh vehicle and the crew they are replacing return in the older vehicle. During the hiatus after the loss of the Shuttle Columbia in 2003 the burden of supporting the ISS fell entirely on the trusty Soyuz and its unmanned stable mate Progress. Over the past forty years nearly 100 manned Soyuz spacecraft have been launched including 38 original Soyuz, 14 Soyuz T, 33 Soyuz TM, and 10 Soyuz TMA and still counting. RKK Energia has announced they are working on new versions of Soyuz including a six man 'Soyuz on Steroids' for ISS ferry operations as an alternative to the now discarded 'Klipper' design and have dusted off plans of the circum-lunar Zond missions to develop a version to take fare paying tourists on trips around the moon.

There are also plans to launch improved Soyuz vehicles from the European Space Agency (ESA) equatorial launch site at Kourou in French Guinea. Finally if imitation is the greatest form of flattery the Chinese have based the design of their new Shenzhou manned spacecraft on Soyuz. If you wish to find out more about this largely unhearalded but truely remarkable spacecraft I heartily recommend Rex Hall and David Shayler's book 'Soyuz - A Universal Spacecraft' which is the most comprehensive source available in the English language.