Soyuz

The journey of the Soyuz to the International Space Station can last six hours or two days depending on the mission profile. The return journey, in contrast, lasts only 3 hours. Normally, the decent module touches down on Earth at a velocity of less than 2 metres/sec.

The habitable space in the descent module is just 4 cubic metres. The decent module weighs, 2.9 tonnes.

The previous version of the Soyuz was the TMA, which replaced the TM. The “A” corresponds to “anthropometric”, because in this model height limitations for the crew were eliminated. The first flight of a TMA (the TMA-1) took place on 30 October 2002. Upon its return to Earth, in May 2003, a problem forced it to reenter in ballistic mode and land 460 kilometres away from the planned landing site. But the astronauts were not hurt, thanks also to the “soft landing” system that reduces the impact of landing from 12 g (as it was in the Soyuz TM series) to 5 g.

The current version of the Soyuz is the MS spacecraft. The ‘MS’ denotes the most recent update to the fourth generation of this long-serving spacecraft. It stands for Modified Systems, with many smaller technological upgrades to make the spacecraft lighter and more modern. For example halogen lights have been replaced with LEDs and newer and larger solar panels to increase power generation.