Last weekend I went to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh to check out Astronaut Tim Peake’s Soyuz Capsule. The one that brought him home from the International Space Station after his mission along with two other astronauts.
Why am I focussing on Tim Peake? Well, he’s the first British ESA (European Space Agency) Astronaut and the second to wear the British flag in space (the first was Helen Sharman, who visited Mir as part of Project Juno in 1991) and is the seventh UK born person to go to space.
Now his space suit and the Soyuz capsule that brought him home are on display in the museum. It’s doing a tour across the UK as part of a bid to inspire today’s youth to go into the sciences and get interested in space.
The first thing that strikes you as you see the capsule is how utterly tiny it really is! In space flight every gram counts as you try to get into orbit so it makes sense that they are so compact, what’s even crazier is that this thing was designed in the 60s and its still going strong! They’ve had their fair share of accidents for sure, but no other spacecraft so far has outlived Soyuz.
See all those lines and marks on the hull, those are the scorch marks from re-entry!
This module is the centre module of the Soyuz spacecraft. The spacecraft is split into three modules and this is the part that is specifically for re-entry. The rear module is the service module with all the equipment, thrusters, life support etc, the front module has the docking port and is considered the orbiter section of the craft.
The window for the astronauts to look out of is tiny, they can see ever so little, as they mainly fly by instrument and a few small monitors in the spacecraft.
It was definitely cool to see. It’s crazy that Soyuz was originally designed as part of Russia’s lunar program before budget problems (and the death of their chief designer Korolev) derailed the program leaving the Americans running a race against no one.. but at the time they didn’t know Russia had cancelled it’s space program in favour of developing ballistic missiles. I would not want to spend a week inside such a small space on my way to the moon, in that sense the American craft were definitely more spacious.
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