Chinese Manned Launch A Success, Even Before It Really Happened

Today's launch of the Shenzhou 7 mission was undoubtedly of major importance to the national pride of China. So much so that now it appears that a full article and narrative of the launch was posted on the web site of the country's official news agency, Xinhua...before the launch ever took place! The article, dated two days in the future, was eventually discovered and taken down. Fortunately the launch lived up to the article and was a success sending a three man crew into orbit on China's third manned mission and its first since 2005. The crew is expected to make an EVA from their Soyuz clone Shenzhou spacecraft sometime tomorrow, which would be another first for the Chinese space program. The mission is intended to help China develop technologies and procedures for an eventual orbital docking and space station. But it makes me wonder if the mission had been a failure (i.e. kaboom), would the government still have ran the propaganda piece to cover it up?

[AP via Gizmodo]

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The Big Picture Does Baikonur

We really can't say enough good things here at PointNiner about the Boston Globe's photo-blog, The Big Picture. I could almost swear that Alan Taylor's job is to feed this blog with big, beautiful and relevant photos. This time he's done a great piece on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan where the Russian Space Agency launches all of their manned and unmanned systems. You almost feel like you're watching the Space Race unveil before your eyes in some of these photos. The photographers do an excellent job capturing that "Cold War in a bottle" essence here.

CLICK HERE to see all of the beautiful hi-res photos.

Ahh, Proton...my favorite Russian giant.

Doesn't it look like this Soyuz spacecraft is just suspended in mid air?

Russians...still doing it old school.

[The Big Picture]

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NASA Urges Caution Amid Soyuz Reports

In a nice politically correct move, NASA cautioned against speculation ahead of the facts after a the Russians reported the three crew members aboard Soyuz TMA-11 were in grave danger when it re-entered the atmosphere on April 19.

Reportedly, the Soyuz vehicle entered the atmosphere facing the wrong direction and suffered severe heat damage to its hatch. In a post-landing press conference, one astronaut said she was frightened by the heating glow she could see out the window. No big deal, just facing the wrong direction as you re-enter the unforgiving atmosphere. Some unnamed Russian sources said that the crew was lucky they survived. Further, the crew is suspected of experiencing over 8Gs of force due to the Soyuz capsule's ballistic trajectory, when the normal max force is 5Gs.

A similar problem occurred on TMA-10 flight, but when that capsule re-entered, the TMA-11 was already docked at the International Space Station, so nothing could be done other than to determine what caused the TMA-10 malfunction and have the crew check it out on the TMA-11 capsule. It was suspected that the TMA-10 capsule had a control cable problem.

But according to NASA, we should not believe those Russians. I suppose they would like us to not believe Russia took out that Georgian UAV too.

In the pictures: top picture is of the Soyuz TMA-11 capsule on its side after re-entry; second one is a photo of the TMA-11 capsule parachuting in after its rough re-entry; bottom one is the spent TMA-10 capsule.


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Expedition 17 launches on hope, 1960s Soviet technology

The crew of Expedition 17 lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan this morning headed for the International Space Station on board their Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft to start their 6 month stay in space. Expedition 17 is carrying two Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonauts and one Korean female astronaut as part of the Korean Astronaut Program. Among other things, she'll be bringing an experiment of 1,000 fruit flies to the ISS, so it will be easy to identify whose fault it is when flies start turning up all over the place on the station. The TMA-12 spacecraft will return the Korean astronaut and two Expedition 16 astronauts to Earth next week. I'm glad to see the Soyuz rocket and Soyuz spacecraft still chuggin along after 40 years of dedicated service. Take that, America and your fancy new Orion spacecraft!

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