Tag Archives: space

Hi everyone!

Yesterday I was lucky enough to personally watch the landing of the Soyuz MS-27 descent module from the RKA Mission Control Center in the town of Korolyov just outside Moscow. And it was a wholly interesting event! Surprisingly, taking photos was allowed, with the press up on the balcony reporting live. I too was up on the same balcony – and it all looked like this:

// Curiously, down on the right there are two flags next to each other – those of Russia and the U.S., which is quite a rarity these days.

Launches and landings of spacecraft – especially manned ones – are rather long-winded processes. When landing, the cosmonauts close the hatches more than three hours before undocking (six hours and 40+ minutes before the actual landing), undocking from the ISS occurs around two hours and 30 minutes before braking begins, and from the beginning of braking to touching down on Earth it’s just under an hour.

Read on…

Hi folks!

Since my tales from the Altai side are many and lengthy, today – an interlude in-between two of them for a breath of fresh air. Not that you can get air (or river water) fresher than that in Altai, but, I digress…

And so, just the other day, I finally managed to visit the RKK Energiya Museum in the town small city of Korolyóv (often spelled Korolev) just outside Moscow. The museum is dedicated to both the company’s own story and the history of the Soviet and Russian rocket-and-space industry as a whole. My impressions? Absolutely amazing! And with all due respect to the Museum of Cosmonautics, this place is better!

This is the very spot where all these technologies were invented and assembled, and – for those that returned from space – brought back to again. That’s what makes this place truly unique: the spacecraft you see here were typically produced in just two or three identical “copies”. One would fly into space, while the others stayed on Earth. So even if these specific pieces never made it to orbit, everything here is original – not mock-ups.

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It’s been ages since the last time I wrote about outer space – too long; for space is cool far out!…

Exploration of extraterrestrial space in any form, manned or not – plus cosmonautics, astrophysics and telescopes at the top of volcanoes, it’s all extremely important for the whole of mankind – and fantastically interesting for the individual (for example, me). So when I was invited to the Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow, I immediately accepted…

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For the first time in my life I’ve seen a comet unassisted – with just the naked eye. Oh my Gerasimenko! ->

Greetings all – from China’s Qinghai province, where right now up above our heads we can see the 62P/Tsuchinshan comet without a telescope. And it’s going to be flying past Earth for around another week!…

Like I say, I hadn’t seen one before, since they’re a rather rare phenomenon – even though there are plenty of them; for example, there’s the famous Halley’s Comet, which we won’t see again until July 28, 2061 (if clouds don’t get in the way).

So when will 62P return to our cosmic skies? Some astronomers think… never!

First – a review of the series:

Part 1: Ocean-going adventures

Part 2: South Pole & North Pole adventures

Part 3: Land-based (road and rail) adventures

Part 4: Chartered… train adventure

Part 5: Beijing Bird-Nest Stadium adventure

Part 6: Volcanic, cockpit & air-pocket adventures

And finally, closing the series – an aerial weightlessness adventure!…

Ten 25-second bursts of complete weightlessness – zero-gravity: just like what astronauts endure when in a space ship or station in outer space! And we experienced it in this here special Roscosmos astronaut-training airplane ->

Oh my gravity-less! A simply cosmic experience!

Read on:…

The other day I visited a most unusual, unique place – and just down the road too. It’s a space-travel training complex where they do simulations of long missions into space. You may have heard of a small group of volunteers who cut themselves off from the world for a long as it takes to fly to Mars and back? Well, this is the place where that happens…

…In this unassuming building:

…Namely – inside cylindrical chambers like the one in the following pic, whose size is no larger than that of a modern-day space ship. Inside everything’s set up to imitate as closely as possible a space flight: limited space, regeneration of water and oxygen, time delays in communications ‘with Earth’, etc. The only thing that’s not reproduced is weightlessness; oh – and windows through which you can see stars ).

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Guten tag folks!

As promised earlier, herewith, a bit lot more detail on some of the presentations at this year’s Starmus in Zurich. The main theme here: the first moon landing.

Quick (relevant) digression: it was our traditional all-day-and-night birthday bash the other week, and since it’s just a few days since the 50^th anniversary of the Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind, we thought we’d add a sprinkling of cosmonautical space dust to the proceedings: we invited along two very experienced and very highly-respected astronauts: Oleg Kotov and Sergey Krikalyov. (And let me tell you that both of them have no doubts whatsoever that the Americans really did land on the moon!)

But back to the Starmus highlights. Let me go through some of the best few presentations:

Gerry Griffin was one of the managing directors of the Apollo Program. He was one of the heroes who managed to get the stricken Apollo 13 back to earth safely. A very interesting story – dramatized many times, most notably in the 1995 movie Apollo 13 starring Tom Hanks.

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So, what else did we get up to in Zurich, besides beer-and-bathe by/in the river? We got ourselves to perhaps my fave annual festival – STARMUS, which – oh my galaxy! – is already in its fifth year! Space, universes, stars, black holes; man’s space projects; plus assorted other jaw-dropping reports on scientific research from all over the planet and beyond; plus a traditional mega-music concert of impressive caliber (alas, which we traditionally miss).

Check out some of the speakers at this year’s event:

• ‘Moonwalker’ Buzz Aldrin (yep – second man on the moon (on Apollo 11);
• Charles Duke (Apollo 16); and
• Harrison Schmidt (Apollo 17).

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From time to time I find some planned OMG moments in my diary in among the unscheduled ones. This short post is about my most recent one…

Read on: it’s awesome!

The idea of space travel has been knocking about in the back of my brain for quite a few years now, in fact since the time when Sir Richard Branson was sponsoring the Brawn GP Formula One Team. Back then we (KL) were mulling over getting into F-1 sponsorship (which we eventually did get into by sponsoring Scuderia Ferrari) and I met RB at a race. To cut a long story short, after a good bit of banter I ended up buying a ticket from his good offices – for a trip into space!

Since then, I’ve managed to bone up and get some practice in on space-related themes by experiencing weightlessness (in an IL-76), witnessing the launch of a Soyuz from Baikonur, and visiting the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City.

https://www.instagram.com/p/wtT_yhuiSq/

Weightlessness is just awesome, and I had no real problems getting the knack of it. But to dock a Soyuz trainer to a mock-up International Space Station – I couldn’t crack that: I couldn’t get the hang of the management console there. It seems space engineers have no clue about user experience and A/B testing :).

In the meantime, a cosmodrome was built for Virgin Galactic. This isn’t too large as only sub-orbital planes are planned to be launched from it. There’ve already been test flights, glamorous presentations, and other assorted good news stories coming out of it. Then there was some very bad news; then there was a long silence for some 18 months.

Then, just the other day, out of the blue space, I received a communication of cosmic importance! (They don’t forget about their clients – already a good sign. But it gets better…)

Read on: Dear astronaut…