In the last two flights, the new architecture of the Soyuz was used, which affects the duration of the flight and docking at the space station. The method was successfully added with some of the cargo flights on the Progress spacecraft, and this is the second time as mentioned that it is used on a manned Soyuz flight.
Soyuz commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian space agency, American astronaut Karen Nyberg and European astronaut Luca Parmitano docked with the Soyuz spacecraft in the Rasvet module of the space station at 05:16 this morning (May 29). "Thank you for the best spaceship" Yurchikhin broadcasted to the control room in Moscow after docking.
In the last two flights, the new architecture of the Soyuz was used, which affects the duration of the flight and docking at the space station. The method was successfully added with some of the cargo flights on the Progress spacecraft, and this is the second time as mentioned that it is used on a manned Soyuz flight.
In the past, Soyuz capsules and the Progress model supply ships were launched on a trajectory that required two days or 34 orbits of the Earth to reach the International Space Station. The new trajectory requires that the missile be launched shortly after the station passes over the launch pad. Additional ignitions of the vehicle's engines are then required early in the mission to shorten the time required for the Russian spacecraft to reach the station.
The three joined current station commander Pavel Vinogradov, his Russian colleague Alexander Mysorkin and NASA astronaut Chris Cassini. The three have been staying at the station since March 28 this year. All six attended a welcome ceremony as their families watched from the Russian space agency's control center in the city of Korolev near Moscow.
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someone
The computers in the spacecraft that operate the spacecraft are only rarely upgraded, according to what is said to be the case. There are probably two reasons for this:
* An upgrade may cause bugs in operation and there is no possibility of recovering from a bug because in the meantime the spaceship has changed its place in space and it is impossible to return it to its previous place.
* Most of the bugs expected in the upgrade are not in the computers but in the drive systems that are not built to work in perfect harmony with the computers, therefore a bug-free upgrade requires upgrading the drive systems outside of the computers and this is a complicated job.
Upgrading computers that operate autonomously
Regardless of the drive systems (such as desktops and tablets) it is probably not problematic.
Skeptic, thank you for your answer, at first glance it seems to make sense, although I find it hard to believe that the computers of 10 years ago did not have a powerful enough calculation power to perform such calculations that seem relatively simple (reminds me of matriculation questions in physics about the movement of bodies relative to each other, not math so complicated)
someone
I did not find an authoritative source beyond the details that were included in the previous article, a comment from a commenter whose name I do not remember (maybe they called him ״חיים ״ anyway I mentioned his name in my comment on a previous article). Also, the principles of physics in this matter are quite simple (at the level of the principle).
In addition to that, in the background I remember an article or two or a movie where they explained how you can prevent an asteroid from hitting the country if you start diverting it from the direction of movement when it is a *long* distance from the earth. In the same story about deflecting an asteroid, it is said that if the deflection is when it is at a great distance from the Earth, then the energy required for deflection is less than the energy needed for deflection if it is close to the Earth. The energy in an asteroid deflection is roughly proportional to the angle of deflection, the angle of deflection is smaller the farther the asteroid is from Earth at the time the deflection operation is activated. The story of the asteroid deflection also relies on very simple principles of physics (at least at the principle level).
The movement of the Soyuz spacecraft has a story similar to the story about the asteroid:
The flight to the space station is not made by an exact route but by an approximate route, during the flight there are several direction corrections to reset the direction as much as possible. If the orbit is longer (meaning more laps around the Earth) the orbit corrections require less energy (the calculation is similar to the calculation of the motion of an asteroid in a straight line, the only difference is that in the Soyuz orbit the motion is not in a circular line but in a spiral line because the gravitational force that continues to act on the Soyuz is included in the calculation of the forces Soyuz all the time).
Since in the context of Soyuz movement it is a process of trial and error, try and error, in the try phase (where the power of the short drive is calculated for the purpose of correcting a course) accuracy in the calculations is important (the more accurate the calculations, the closer the result of the try phase is to the desired course). If the try phase is more accurate, then the fuel needed for the future repair (the error phase) is a smaller amount of fuel. From all of this it appears that when the calculations are more accurate there is less fuel wasted during fuel time in course corrections, therefore it is possible to reduce the number of course corrections or increase their intensity. The end result is that when the accuracy in the calculations is increased, the length of the movement path can be shortened because fewer corrections are required and the corrections are more accurate.
It's less complicated than it sounds here in words. I think that an aeronautical engineer or a rocket engineer could have formulated better and could also add drawings that would make the explanation clearer.
The explanation sounds logical and interesting, is it based on a qualified source or just a personal guess?
This is a result of the improvement of the accuracy in driving spacecraft, as a result of the improvement of the computers that are installed in the spacecraft. I commented on this briefly in connection with a previous launch, I think it was an unmanned launch then. Improving the accuracy of the computers makes it possible to reduce fuel consumption during Soyuz maneuvering for its attachment route to the space station.
A more detailed description than what I have given is beyond my powers and beyond the powers of an ordinary journalist.
Why has this method not been used until today? Is this a new invention that has only just been thought of?