Soyuz Missions and Taxi Flight: New Opportunities for Technology Development

Paper number

IAC-05-A2.6.09

Author

Dr. Raimondo Fortezza, MARS s.r.l., Italy

Year

2005

Abstract

Soyuz Vehicle represents today a fundamental Spacecraft: it provides the astronaut transfer from ground to ISS and it ensures, at the same time, the possibility to escape from it. A Soyuz capsule therefore has to remain always attached to the ISS to be potentially used as Crew Escape Vehicle in case of need. To maintain the full operability the Soyuz needs to be replaced every six months by a new one. The mission aimed to launch a new spacecraft and to retrieve the \"used\" one is called Taxi Flight. The Russian since few years offers commercial seat available during this mission on the bases of commercial contracts. Several Space Tourists already made use of this opportunity like Tennis Tito or Mark Shuttleworth. But a Taxi Flight is not only a good opportunity to flight, but it could represent also a unique chance for Scientist and Engineers to find new flight opportunities. It is possible to flight a piece of equipment on board ISS for up 10 days, with the possibility to have also other resources available, like crew time, telemetry, commanding, etc. Of course to exploit such an opportunity and to develop space hardware, a company willing to carry-out its own experiment, need to have in-house resource to support the mission. Often the resources are not enough or the specific know-how for a space mission is missing. But today to help the users, very often represented by a SMI, there is in ESA a dedicated team able to transform an idea into a consolidated flying experiment.
The paper is aimed at presenting the reference scenario, the approach and methodologies used and offer a guide for future Users.
The example of three experiments to be flown in the Soyuz 10S mission is presented together with the plan used to pass from the concept to the space qualified items in less than nine months

Abstract document

IAC-05-A2.6.09.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-05-A2.6.09.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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