Roscosmos Pushes Back Pirs Module Undocking to Monday
Editor’s Note: The undocking of the Pirs module from the International Space Station had been scheduled for Friday to make way for the new Nauka science module. The delaty is due to problems with Nauka’s engines and docking system after launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome last week. Those issues have apparently been resolved.
MOSCOW (Roscosmos PR) — Based on the results of an operational meeting of the control group at the Flight Control Center of TsNIIMash (part of the Roscosmos State Corporation), specialists, based on the data obtained from telemetry and based on the need to build optimal orbit conditions, decided to adjust the plans for undocking the Pirs module. These operations are currently scheduled for Monday 26 July 2021.
On Saturday, Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov closed the transfer hatches between the Pirs module and the Russian segment of the International Space Station, and checked them for leaks. The physical separation of the bundle from the Progress MS-16 cargo vehicle and the Pirs module from the ISS is tentatively scheduled at 13:56 Moscow time on July 26, and the fall of the fireproof structural elements of the module and the ship in the Pacific Ocean – at 17:51 Moscow time. the same day.
Now the Pirs docking module is docked to the nadir port of the Zvezda service module of the Russian segment of the station. It is planned that after undocking its place will be taken by the multipurpose laboratory module “Science”, which was launched on Wednesday from the Baikonur cosmodrome and is in autonomous flight.
On the eve of this event, the Aist-2D small Earth remote sensing spacecraft, developed at the Progress Rocket and Space Center (Samara, part of the Roscosmos State Corporation), photographed the International Space Station. RCC “Progress” is the operator of the satellite “Aist-2D”, providing control, reception, processing and distribution of the received information of remote sensing of the Earth.
21 responses to “Roscosmos Pushes Back Pirs Module Undocking to Monday”
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Nauka is supposedly due at ISS on 7-29. Pirs needs to be gone by then or Nauka will have nowhere to dock. But Pirs won’t be cut loose until it’s certain Nauka will arrive. I have a feeling we may see some additional delays in Pirs’s departure.
Yet another soap opera from Rogozin’s Roscosmos. They could do much, much better.
not really they are I think operating at max performance
Rogozin’s boss is the problem. We have folks wanting to kill SLS and kill jobs here too.
In Russia, Rogozin’s boss is everyone’s problem.
We do have folks here wanting to kill SLS. I’m one of them. The “jobs” supported by the SLS budget are the economic equivalent of paying people to dig holes and fill them up again. And those jobs are doomed anyway. It would be kinder to those involved to shutter the program in a way that allows those involved some time to seek other employment in phases rather than have everyone thrown suddenly out of work without warning and flood certain local employment markets. But I expect the Alabama Mafia, even in its current weakened condition, to hold out to the bitter end, thus insuring the sort of sudden brittle fracture of the whole SLS program that will inflict maximum damage on the rank and file.
You aren’t hurting Boeing execs by killing SLS.@ Hurting jobbers isn’t kind. I like that Apollo made jobs. Same here.
You would apparently like third world countries where everyone has a full time job called surviving. Jobs are not value, productivity is. SLS is anti-productivity..
No one is interested in hurting Boeing execs. They are not even doing anything wrong. Their contract, written by NASA at the instruction of the Congress, has been carefully constructed to encourage Boeing to take as long as possible to develop SLS in the most labor intensive manner possible, a reprise of the shuttle, only this time we’re not even going to pretend that it’s going to yield an economical solution. Boeing is just doing what they are meant to be doing.
The problem is we want to see some actual space exploration. Watching the space exploration budget get shunted to an unproductive jobs program year after year is dispiriting, especially since it’s been going on since 1972. For how many generations must we preserve that workforce? Is there any chance at all that they might work on something useful one day?
The space exploration budget is supposed to be spent on space exploration.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Quite. A good analogy would be to the March of Dimes, originally organized as the Mother’s March Against Infantile Paralysis (Polio). It was, as the original name plainly states, ginned up to end polio. It did so. Rather than disband after accomplishing its original goal, the March of Dimes found another worthy project to take on. It would be nice if MSFC was more like the March of Dimes. But, unlike the March of Dimes, MSFC lives on tax money and that has made all the difference.
Keeping rocketry alive beyond any one or two billionaires is important.
They become billionaires so fast. Look at Peter Beck. he was a hairy footed hobbit just yesterday. And what of the horde of wannabe billionaires? The commercial launch market will definitely see a huge contraction. But it is not going away, and if we want to build a space economy, which surely will require more support and nurturing from the government, then the government should not be competing against the private actors that we currently have. The fact that the biggest players were billionaires when they got into the space business (Bezos and Branson) or became billionaires as a result of getting into the space business (Musk and now Beck) does not make commercial space launch technology suspect. Quite the opposite. It’s attracting real money and talent. It’s creating real wealth.
And even if a plausible argument can be made for the government to be competing with the private sector, which to me did not seem to be the case in 2010, nevermind now, that still in no way justifies the utter hash they have made of it. SLS has been a bad faith effort from its conception. The hostility with which the congressional NASA caucus has greeted the blossoming of commercial space is testament to that bad intent. These folks do not want humanity to expand into space. They want to maintain the status quo that is inexorably slipping away, where we spend decade after decade wallowing in a too expensive space exploration program that produces too little. They are not interested in what it produces. What it produces is beside the point.
The world has moved on. There is no national security need to maintain a standing army of people ready and able to build a big rocket. There never was such a need. It was a false construct to justify a government jobs program masquerading as something else. That was my view at the time. But at least you could justify the shuttle program on the grounds that we needed some sort of launch capability and we already had a workforce to build it. But half a century has passed and the landscape has changed. The space industries are growing and are hungry for talent. They don’t have enough bodies. Why are we still doing this?
I don’t think SLS is bad faith at all. I want hydrogen upper stages and Musk is fixated on methalox. I like that this nation has HLLV options
Jobs with no long-term economic reason for being don’t last. The people cozened into taking them are being done no favors. As the late economist Herb Stein quite accurately said, “things that can’t go on… don’t.” Employment, even at firms that are not living off of doomed government programs, is precarious enough. I’ve been in the water when the corporate ship I was on took an out-of-the-blue torpedo more times in my checkered “career” than I care to remember. But there simply isn’t any way to guarantee everyone’s job in perpetuity and it’s not government’s proper role even to try. Making just certain people the beneficiaries of such guarantees is not long-term sustainable in a democratic nation based on the idea of equal treatment for all either.
Even had SS/SH not existed, I think SLS…even if only 50 were made for Rods from god…could have give us New Defense. I want tribal knowledge preserved.
One thing I wonder about is the average age of the SLS/Orion workforce. How many would just take early retirement? And hope the program lasts until they are eligible.
BTW that seems to be a factor in the shortage of airline pilots following the Covid lockdowns, made worst by the aging of the airline aircrew workforce.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/m…
A Massive Pilot Shortage Is Coming: What It Means for Airlines
Adam Levine-Weinberg 6/27/2021
I’ve never been to Michoud or Huntsville, but I’m guessing the cafeterias there look about the same as the one at the erstwhile Bethlehem Steel plant in L.A. (City of Vernon, actually) did back in 1979 when I did some consulting work there – lots of snow on the roofs. That place was unceremoniously shuttered three years later to the evident great surprise of its workforce, but not to me.
Covid is only icing on the pilot shortage cake. The real problem has been that U.S. airlines have been treating the U.S. military as its “farm system” and the “farms” are being subdivided or paved over. USAF, USN and USMC fly fewer planes than previously because each is so ruinously expensive. And then, of course, there is the steady encroachment of drones into all aspects of military aviation. This is not a happy time to be running an airline.
been working and flying for fun all day…did they do a burn on the main engines (Sunday late night I am asking)
No idea. The Russkies don’t seem to be saying much. Uncharacteristically, neither are the amateur satellite “trainspotters.” I’ve been looking for any confirmation from such sources that Nauka is actually headed for ISS but have come up dry. If Pirs fails to depart on 7-26, as per the most recent word from Roscosmos, that will not be a good sign. We’ll just have to see what befalls.
Pirs has just left.
Here’s hoping that Nauka is able to dock with the ISS. Anyone know the consequences if it fails to do so? It is just that the ISS will have less capability? Or will it seriously effect it’s ability to function?
Yep, it did. And Nauka has subsequently arrived and docked. Let the vodka flow and the hordes of space tourists get in line.