";s:4:"text";s:1782:"Soyuz capsules designed to service the ISS received the designation TMA, which stands for Transportnyi Modifitsirovannyi Antropometricheskii (Transportation Modified Anthropometric). Soyuz 11 ended in disaster in 1971 when an equalization valve, used to equalize air pressure during the Soyuz final descent, prematurely opened in the vacuum of space, killing the three crew members, who … At 04:53 UTC the three crew members, safely strapped inside of Soyuz MS-15’s heat shield protected descent module, hit the atmosphere at about 25,000 kilometers per hour (17,500 miles per hour). Michael G. Lutomskia*, Steven J. Farnham IIb, and Warren C. Grantb. With the crew surviving its ordeal, the growing maturity of Soyuz and its safety systems had been proven. Luckily, the service module was burned off and the capsule righted itself. 1 Estimating the Reliability of a Soyuz Spacecraft Mission . Later Soyuz spacecraft detach the orbital module before firing the main engine, which saves even more propellant, enabling the descent module to return more payload. The Soyuz descent module came down in the Altai Mountains 1,574 kilometers downrange after a flight of 21 minutes and 27 seconds. While unintentional, this was the first manned suborbital spaceflight since X-15 flight number 91 on August 22, 1963 (see “ In no case can the orbital module remain in orbit as an addition to a space station, for the hatch enabling it to function as an airlock is part of the descent module.
aNASA-JSC, Houston, TX – Michael.g.lutomski@nasa.gov bARES Corporation , Houston TX. The Russian Soyuz spacecraft carries people and supplies to and from the space station.