WASHINGTON DC. March 14 (Interfax-AVN) - The first modernized manned spaceship Soyuz TMA-M may have a ballistic landing on Wednesday, NASA said.
Soyuz TMA-M commander Alexander Kaleri will test angular speed sensors after the ship undocks from the International Space Station (ISS). The other crewmembers of Soyuz TMA-M are Oleg Skripochka and Scott Kelly.
If a problem occurs, the astronauts may experience G8 to G10 in the ballistic return, NASA said.
Astronauts experience G3 to G4 in the case of a regular return.
NASA explained the planned check of angular speed sensors with the failure of the landing capsule's analog signal processing system, which happened on October 9, 2010, on the second day of Soyuz TMA-M's flight to the ISS. As a result, data from angular speed sensors stopped being displayed on the Neptun-ME console.
In early February 2011 Kaleri installed new angular speed sensors, which were supplied by the Progress M-09M cargo spaceship in late January, NASA said.
Meanwhile, a source at the Russian mission control center told Interfax-AVN that the Soyuz undocking from the Poisk unit of the ISS Russian segment was due at 7:27 a.m. Moscow time on March 16.
The descent will begin at 9:58 a.m. Moscow time, and the landing is due at 10:49 a.m. northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan.
Soyuz TMA-M is the first manned spaceship of the new series. It was designed at the Energia Aerospace Corporation on the platform of Soyuz TMA, which had performed 20 space flights since October 2002.
The new spaceship has digital motion control, navigation and telemetric systems, including the CVM-101 computer replacing the obsolete Argon-16.
The modernization enlarged the spaceship payload. New instruments were tested in flights of Progress M freighters.
There will be test flights of the new spaceship, Soyuz TMA-M and Soyuz TMA-02M (the latter due on May 30, 2011). The final tests will involve Soyuz TMA-03M, which will be launched on November 30, 2011.