The next trio of crew members destined for the International Space
Station is now looking forward to a Thursday arrival at the orbiting
laboratory after their Soyuz spacecraft was unable to complete its third
thruster burn to fine-tune its approach.
Soyuz Commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Oleg
Artemyev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Steve
Swanson of NASA are in good spirits aboard the Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft,
and their colleagues already aboard the station were informed of the
new plan. Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency and Flight Engineers Rick Mastracchio of NASA and
Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos were expecting their new crewmates to dock
at 11:05 p.m. EDT Tuesday night, but now will need to wait a little
longer.
Flight controllers in the Mission Control Center outside Moscow are
now reverting to a backup 34-orbit rendezvous, which would result in an
arrival and docking at 7:58 p.m. Thursday, March 27. Rendezvous experts
are reviewing the plan, and may update it later as necessary. Docking
will be at the station’s Poisk docking module.
This longer rendezvous and docking pattern was the standard
rendezvous profile until last year; this would have been the fifth
rendezvous using the accelerated timeline. The last two-day rendezvous
was Expedition 34, which launched on Dec. 19, 2012, and docked to the
station on Dec. 21, 2012. That Soyuz crew included NASA’s Tom Marshburn,
the Canadian Space Agency’s Chris Hadfield and Roscosmos’ Roman
Romanenko. The first same-day rendezvous and docking was Expedition 35,
which launched on March 28, 2013, and docked to the station March 29.
That crew included NASA’s Chris Cassidy and Roscosmos’ Pavel Vinogradov
and Alexander Misurkin.
Flight controllers in Moscow are reviewing data to determine the
reason the third thruster burn did not occur. In conversations between
flight controllers in Moscow and Houston, initial information indicates
the problem may have been the spacecraft was not in the proper attitude,
or orientation, for the burn.
Swanson, Skvortsov and Artemyev are scheduled to return home in
September as Expedition 40 crew members. They will officially become
Expedition 40 when Expedition 39 crew members Wakata, Mastracchio and
Tyurin end their mission and undock in their Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft in
May for their return to Earth.
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