May one day have a space body named ‘Phoenix’ after her.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BANGALORE: A team of two Russian Cosmonauts and one US Astronaut safely reached the International Space Station (ISS) on time despite a major defect in one of the solar arrays of the space capsule.
The $100 billion space shuttle named Soyuz took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 02:25 a.m. (20:25 GMT on Thursday) with Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova, and US astronaut Barry Wilmore.
Shortly after reaching the orbit, the crew detected a major technical flaw – one of the two solar arrays of Soyuz malfunctioned. Though this caused a bit of panic, the crew successfully docked with the ISS using the existing power within six hours after the take-off.
One of the Soyuz crew said, “The port solar array isn’t deployed but the power situation is fine. It just doesn’t look good from the point of view of photographs. We’re eating and drinking, and we’re in good spirits. Everything is as it should be.”
Sources said quoting the ground station that the batteries in the Soyuz was sufficient enough to complete the docking in process, but it would have taken more than two days. Fortunately, the spaceship docked with ISS in auto mode itself at around at about 08:15 a.m. (02:15 GMT).
The new crew will now join Russian Commander Maxim Suraev, U.S. Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman and Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst, a German astronaut of the European Space Agency. The arrival of the new team in ISS has now filled the three vacancies of the six member live-aboard team.
ISS is a space laboratory that is at an altitude of 330 Km above the earth, administered by earth stations in Russia and the United States.
The new crew will serve 170 days in ISS, returning to earth by March next year. The existing team of astronauts will start their journey back to earth this November. They have been in the ISS since May.
On the arrival of the new team, ISS now has the first ever women cosmonaut from Russia. The 38 year old space industry engineer, Serova is the fourth women from Russia to fly in to space.
Days before her space odyssey Serova said in an interview that she had long dreamed about proving that Russian women can return to space flights.
The first women space traveler Valentina Tereshkova was also from Russia. She is still known for her flight call-sign “Chaika” (“Seagull”) which was later commemorated as the name of an asteroid.
Serova during the interview said if given an opportunity to select a call-sign she would go with the name “Phoenix”.
The team of new astronaut cum researchers will conduct more than 50 scientific experiments during their stay in ISS.