“Another visit to Mars. It’s the Americans again”, RIA Novosti, 26/5. Opinion piece by Andrei Kislyakov on what Russia’s Mars plans are (none for the near-future, unfortunately).
The Russian Space Agency does not have a clearly articulated Martian program. There is a reason for that. Russia at present is implementing the Federal Space Program for 2006-2015, which does not envisage large-scale Martian projects.
At the same time Roscosmos has repeatedly said that manned missions to Mars are certain to take place after 2030-2035. Next year will see the start of the much-touted Mars-500 project, when a group of volunteers will spend 520 days in a special module simulating the conditions of a prolonged space flight. As part of that project the Russian Medical-Biological Research Institute in late May completed experiments to assess the capacity of the human body to spend prolonged periods in a confined space with low oxygen content.
In addition, a detailed plan of a manned expedition to Mars has long been developed, as many Russian space officials have declared. The head of RKK Energia corporation, Vitaly Lopota, has been speaking about the Martian project developed by his corporation.
“The complex includes an interplanetary orbital vehicle, the power tug, and the take-off and landing complex. The interplanetary expedition complex should be assembled and tested in the near-Earth orbit as a reusable vehicle with a mass of up to 500 tons and a life span of 15 years. It would have a crew of four to six people. The mission to Mars would last up to 900 days, including a one-month stay on Mars of a crew of two to three people,” Lopota said in a interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta in early February of this year.
If Russia did manage to put the first humans on Mars, this would more than compensate for past disappointments!
“Pyrobolt failure caused Soyuz bumpy re-entry – Roscosmos”, RIA Novosti, 24/5. The main cause of the Soyuz TMA-11 ballistic re-entry was the failure of one of five pyrobolts to separate the Descent Module from the Instrumentation/Propulsion Module, so the separation occured later in the descent.
Mars-500 update: 24 May 2008 was the last day of a week of interviews at the ESA’s European Astronaut Center at Cologne (32 candidates were called, 8 will be selected). The results (final ESA choice) will be communicated to the candidates by the end of this month. Training for the 105-day mission will begin in August/September 2008.
An annoyed posting in defence of the Buran space shuttle at the Unmanned Spaceflight.com forum:
“How the Soviets Stole a Space Shuttle” >:-(
“How the Soviet Space Shuttle Fizzled” >:-(
What utter rubbish. Reading these biased hachet-jobs, one would think that the Buran orbiters were some sort of stolen xerox-copy of the US Shuttle. That is complete nonsense. The Buran orbiter was an aerodynamic copy of the Shuttle because that is what the customer (Soviet Military) wanted, ie a like-for-like equivalent of what they believed would be a strategic weapon system. From the outside it looks very similar (especially to technically-challenged journalists) but internally the Buran was engineered indigenously using Soviet technology & engineering practises.
This shoddy and parochial “journalism” is just another example refusing to give the Soviets appropriate recognition for their acheivements. Mean spirited and petty, some people just don't get that the Cold War is over.
Vassili Petrovitch has a section on his Buran site recounting his group tour of Star City and Baikonur in Russia, attending the recent launch of TMA-12.
