Departing Soyuz crew to snap space station portrait
By WILLIAM HARWOOD
CBS News
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL--An Italian astronaut aboard a departing Russian Soyuz ferry craft Monday will snap one-of-a-kind pictures and video showing the International Space Station with the shuttle Endeavour attached before heading for a landing in Kazakhstan, NASA officials said Friday.
With the shuttle program slated for retirement after one more flight in July, the out-of-this-world photo opportunity comes at almost the last possible minute. The pictures snapped Monday will capture the first and only time a shuttle and the station have appeared in the same field of view from a remote vantage point, a family portrait expected to grace history books for years to come.
"This is going to be a great opportunity for the spaceflight community," said Kenneth Todd, space station integration manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The opportunity to take the pictures arose when an electrical glitch forced NASA to delay Endeavour's launching fro April 29 to May 16, ensuring the shuttle would still be docked when the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft departed. Expedition 27 commander Dimitry Kondratyev, Italian astronaut and flight engineer Paolo Nespoli and NASA astronaut Catherine "Cady" Coleman are scheduled to land in Kazakhstan Monday evening U.S. time to close out a 159-day stay in space.
NASA first suggested a Soyuz fly-around earlier this year, but it would have required a Soyuz undocking and re-docking and the Russians, citing technical considerations, did not go along. NASA managers were hoping for an opportunity during the final shuttle flight in July when the Endeavour launch delay presented a less complicated scenario.
To accommodate the photo survey, Kondratyev will undock at 5:35 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) Monday, about an hour and a half earlier than originally planned. Flying manually, Kondratyev will back the Soyuz straight away from the lab complex and begin station keeping at a distance of about 600 feet. Nespoli, seated to the commander's left in the spacecraft's central descent module, will move into the forward, normally closed habitation module to photograph the shuttle-station "stack" through a window with a direct line of sight.
While Nespoli is preparing his cameras and a laser range finder for use, the space station will carry out a 130-degree rotation to provide an unobstructed side view of the shuttle-station complex, with Endeavour on the left end of the stack just above the limb of the Earth. The station's orientation at undocking and its subsequent 2-degree-per-second maneuver were carefully planned to keep the sun out of Kondratyev's eyes while ensuring good lighting for the imagery.
Once the brief photo window closes, Nespoli will float back into the cramped descent module and seal the hatchway to the habitation section. That hatch is normally closed and locked before undocking and the Soyuz crew will have to carry out leak checks, along with suit checks, to ensure a safe descent after the photo opportunity ends. Landing is targeted for 10:26 p.m. Monday.
Unlike the space shuttle, which is equipped with a KU-band antenna for near-continuous communications through a NASA satellite network, the Soyuz crew will have no way to transmit the images from space. NASA managers will be standing by in Kazakhstan to copy the digital photos and video so the long-sought imagery can make its way to both Moscow and Houston.
Details remain to be worked out, however, and it's not yet clear when the imagery will be released to the media.
In the meantime, here is a timeline of major re-entry events (in EDT and mission elapsed time; best viewed with fixed-width font):
CBS News
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL--An Italian astronaut aboard a departing Russian Soyuz ferry craft Monday will snap one-of-a-kind pictures and video showing the International Space Station with the shuttle Endeavour attached before heading for a landing in Kazakhstan, NASA officials said Friday.
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| In the top left view, the station is seen as it will appear to a departing Soyuz crew during undocking Monday. (Credit: NASA TV) |
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| In this view, the space station has been re-oriented to present the shuttle in a side-on view for a one-of-a-kind family portrait. (Credit: NASA TV) |
"This is going to be a great opportunity for the spaceflight community," said Kenneth Todd, space station integration manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The opportunity to take the pictures arose when an electrical glitch forced NASA to delay Endeavour's launching fro April 29 to May 16, ensuring the shuttle would still be docked when the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft departed. Expedition 27 commander Dimitry Kondratyev, Italian astronaut and flight engineer Paolo Nespoli and NASA astronaut Catherine "Cady" Coleman are scheduled to land in Kazakhstan Monday evening U.S. time to close out a 159-day stay in space.
NASA first suggested a Soyuz fly-around earlier this year, but it would have required a Soyuz undocking and re-docking and the Russians, citing technical considerations, did not go along. NASA managers were hoping for an opportunity during the final shuttle flight in July when the Endeavour launch delay presented a less complicated scenario.
To accommodate the photo survey, Kondratyev will undock at 5:35 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) Monday, about an hour and a half earlier than originally planned. Flying manually, Kondratyev will back the Soyuz straight away from the lab complex and begin station keeping at a distance of about 600 feet. Nespoli, seated to the commander's left in the spacecraft's central descent module, will move into the forward, normally closed habitation module to photograph the shuttle-station "stack" through a window with a direct line of sight.
While Nespoli is preparing his cameras and a laser range finder for use, the space station will carry out a 130-degree rotation to provide an unobstructed side view of the shuttle-station complex, with Endeavour on the left end of the stack just above the limb of the Earth. The station's orientation at undocking and its subsequent 2-degree-per-second maneuver were carefully planned to keep the sun out of Kondratyev's eyes while ensuring good lighting for the imagery.
Once the brief photo window closes, Nespoli will float back into the cramped descent module and seal the hatchway to the habitation section. That hatch is normally closed and locked before undocking and the Soyuz crew will have to carry out leak checks, along with suit checks, to ensure a safe descent after the photo opportunity ends. Landing is targeted for 10:26 p.m. Monday.
Unlike the space shuttle, which is equipped with a KU-band antenna for near-continuous communications through a NASA satellite network, the Soyuz crew will have no way to transmit the images from space. NASA managers will be standing by in Kazakhstan to copy the digital photos and video so the long-sought imagery can make its way to both Moscow and Houston.
Details remain to be worked out, however, and it's not yet clear when the imagery will be released to the media.
In the meantime, here is a timeline of major re-entry events (in EDT and mission elapsed time; best viewed with fixed-width font):
EDT/EST.......DDD...HH...MM...SS...EVENT
12/15/10 (EST)
02:09:25 PM...000...00...00...00...Soyuz TMA-20 Launch
5/23/11 (EDT)
04:40:00 PM...159...01...30...35...US to Russian attitue control system handover
04:52:00 PM...159...01...42...35...ISS maneuver to undocking attitude
05:24:36 PM...159...02...15...11...Sunrise
05:29:32 PM...159...02...20...07...Daily orbit 13 Russian ground station AOS
05:31:00 PM...159...02...21...35...ISS to free drift
05:32:00 PM...159...02...22...35...Nominal separation command
05:35:00 PM...159...02...25...35...Physical separation/hooks open
05:36:40 PM...159...02...27...15...ISS to LVLH snap-and-hold
05:38:00 PM...159...02...28...35...Soyuz manual separation burn #1
05:41:00 PM...159...02...31...35...Arrival at stationkeeping (590-650 feet)
05:41:00 PM...159...02...31...35...Habitation module ingress
05:43:20 PM...159...02...33...55...ISS return to undocking attitude
05:44:33 PM...159...02...35...08...Daily orbit 13 Russian ground station LOS
05:50:00 PM...159...02...40...35...Begin ISS photography
05:52:28 PM...159...02...43...03...Noon
05:55:00 PM...159...02...45...35...ISS maneuver to photography attitude
06:06:00 PM...159...02...56...35...ISS in photo attitude
06:15:00 PM...159...03...05...35...Soyuz manual separation burn #2 (20 sec, 1.6 mph)
06:20:00 PM...159...03...10...35...Habitation module egress; start leak checks
06:20:20 PM...159...03...10...55...Sunset -- photography complete
06:21:00 PM...159...03...11...35...ISS maneuver to duty attitude
06:56:01 PM...159...03...46...36...Sunrise
07:00:00 PM...159...03...50...35...Russian to US attitude control handover
07:00:00 PM...159...03...50...35...Hatch and suit leak checks complete
07:02:08 PM...159...03...52...43...Daily orbit 14 RGS AOS
07:19:33 PM...159...04...10...08...Daily orbit 14 RGS LOS
07:36:00 PM...159...04...26...35...Sunrise at landing Site
08:30:13 PM...159...05...20...48...Daily orbit 15 RGS AOS
08:53:58 PM...159...05...44...33...Daily orbit 15 RGS LOS
09:36:14 PM...159...06...26...49...Soyuz deorbit burn start (257.7 mph)
09:40:39 PM...159...06...31...14...Deorbit burn complete
10:03:36 PM...159...06...54...11...Atmospheric entry (62 miles altitude)
10:11:49 PM...159...07...02...24...Command to open parachute (6.6 miles altitude)
10:26:49 PM...159...07...17...24...Landing