09/09/2019

Unpiloted Soyuz MS-14 Spacecraft Returns to Earth with Humanoid Robot on Board

Three Optolink's TRS-500 fiber-optic gyroscopes, installed into control system of Descent Module of unpiloted Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft, successfully executed their mission during landing.

Russia's space agency Roscosmos launched successfully uncrewed  on 22 August 2019 at 03:38 UTC. in order to test the vehicle's compatibility with an upgraded Soyuz 2.1a rocket. It was the first flight of a Soyuz capsule on the 2.1a rocket, which until then had been used to launch robotic Progress cargo ships. Sitting inside the spacecraft was no human crew. Instead, the Soyuz carried the the 6-foot (1.8 meters)  humanoid robot Skybot F-850 (a space version of the country's FEDOR robots). It was the first mission of the Soyuz crew vehicle without a crew in 33 years, and the first ever unpiloted mission of Soyuz to ISS  Roscosmos officials also used the flight to test other upgrades to the Soyuz capsule designed to allow future robotic versions to return cargo back to Earth. The Soyuz MS-14 features an improved guidance, navigation and descent control system. The descent vehicle features a digital angle rate integrator unit-based control system with the fiber-optic gyroscopes instead of an analogous descent control system based on a free-attitude gyroscope. The Soyuz MS-14 space capsule (which was again uncrewed)  landed at 5:32 p.m. EDT, September 5, 2019 (local time 3:32 a.m., September 6) on the steppes of south-central Kazakhstan. Landing occurred about 87 miles (140 kilometers) south, east of the town of Dzhezkazgan