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Aviation Week and Space Technology/July 22,1991 p. 22
[Look for John Biro's name about 3/4 through. MH]
SOVIET COSMONAUTS PLAN DAILY FOR U.S. EMERGENCY LANDINGS
James R. Asker/Washington
Orbiting Soviet cosmonauts receive daily instructions for emergency
landings in the midwestern Uneted States according to an analysis of
crew radio transmissions.
The Soviet contingency plans apparently extend at least from 1975 and
show a willingness to bring cosmonauts down in U.S. territory on short
notice, even through some of the chilliest years of the Cold War.
Today, flight directors in the Soviet mission control center in
suburban Moscow relay data to the crew on board the Mir space station
for landing their Soyuz transport spacecraft at three sites, according
to British analyst Geoffery Perry.
Besides the primary recovery area in the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan,
contingency landings are plottd for the Sea of Okhotsk, off the east
coast of the Soviet Union, and in the north-central plains of the U.S.
For the one or two orbits a day that do not traverse any of those
areas, data are offered for landing in Europe.
Perry analyzed data as far back as the 1975 joint U.S.-Soviet manned
mission, called the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. The data were gathered
by the Kettering Group,an independent network of observers who have
successfully tracked Soviet space flights for more than 30 years.
Flight controllers routinely relay contingency landing opportunities to
all manned spacecraft and the possibility of cosmonauts urgently
leaving space and landing in the U.S. might be presumed from ground
tracks of Mir. However, the specific Soviet plans have not been
previously disclosed.
Althought they said the possibility of cosmonauts landing in the U.S.
is remote, Soviet space officials told Aviation Week & Space Technology
they do calculate such reentries and relay tehem to their flight crews.
NASA officials said they knew of no formal notification by the Soviets
of such a possibility. But they noted that both nations are among those
who signed a 1968 treaty pledging to help rescue and return astronauts.
American students of Soviet space programs said they wre unaware of the
cosmonauts' emergency landing plans but said they found them prudent.
Retired USAF Lt. Gen Thomas P. Stafford, the commander of the Apollo
spacecraft that docked with a Soyuz spacecraft for two days, said he
knew of no contingency plans the cosmonauts had to land in the U.S.
However, Stafford pointed out the Soyuz spacecraft which reenters as a
ballistic vehicle and descends by parachute, is capable of landing on a
wide variety of terrain and in water.
Perry, who coordinates the group of a dozen volunteers around the world
from his home in Bude, Cornwall, England, plans to detail his
conclusions in a paper to be presented July 27 at a colloquium of radio
amateurs, Amsat-U.K., meeting at the University of Surrey at Guildford.
The Soviets' contingency landing site in the U.S. is a broad section of
the American heartland from about 90 deg. to 105 deg. W. Long. and 42
deg. to 49 deg. N. Lat. -- an area covering North Dakota, South Dakota
and Minnesota; much of Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin, and parts of
Illinois, Montana and Wyoming. Some trajectories would bring Soviet
manned spacecraft down as far south as Kansas City, Perry said.
Nowhere Near Soviet Union
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Typically, opportunities to land in the U.S. area present themselves
for fout orbits in succession. The Mir space stations orbit is inclined
51.6 deg. to the equator, taking it over much of the Earth's surface.
But for those four orbits, lasting 6 hr., the spacecraft passes
nowhere near the Soviet Union.
The Soviets apparently believe their chances of recovering cosmonauts
and spacecraft are better following an emergency landing in the flat
north-central U.S. than in the other areas on the ground track of those
orbits -- central Africa, sparsely populated Australia or the North
Atlantic or Indian oceans.
Nicholas L. Johnson, a scientist who follows Soviet space programs for
Teledyne Brown Engineering, said of the planning for U.S. landings,
"Clearly, its a prudent thing for the Soviets to do."
James E. Oberg, a NASA engineer who has written extensively about
Soviet space efforts, said the contingency plans "sound reasonable,"
but he said it would be unwise for the Soviets not to discuss the
eventuality with U.S. officials long before an emergency arose.
Although Soyuz landings are usually so precise ground crews use trucks
instead of helicopters to meet the cosmonauts, the Soviets take
precautions such as turning off high-power electrical lines before
landings, Oberg said.
Oberg also sees the Soviet plans for U.S. landings as a warning to
spacecraft designers. He said, "It's sobering realization that after
all that experience, they don't feel they have a safe haven on the
space station."
Johnson and Perry said they disagree that the contingency landing plans
indicate any lack of confidence in Mir or Soyuz.
Perry traces the Ketterings Group's discovery of the Soviets' U.S.
emergency landing plans to a transmission from comonauts in Soyuz 33
recorded by Mark Severance in Ft. Worth, Tex., on Apr. 11 1979. The
crew repeated a list of orbits times and landing angles. But the data
were baffling, since only two sets of numbers seemed to indicate
landings in Kazakhstan.
Years later, a senior cosmonaut told another member, Sven Grahn that
the landing angle, or "ugol pasadka" in Russian, could be considered "
the argument of retrofire," or the angle subtended at the Earth's
center by the arc of the orbit between retrofire and the landing point.
Perry recognized similar numbers in a transcript from Mir transmissions
of Jan 25 and May 27, 1988 recorded by John Biro of Chelmsford, Mass.
Grahn reminded Perry about NASA transcripts from Apollo-Soyuz and they
found indications of contingencies for landing in the U.S. Midwest and
in the Picardy region of France.
The Kettering Group is named after the British grammer school at which
Perry once taught. Twenty-five years ago, Perry and his students, using
simple equipment, deduced the location of the then-secret third Soviet
launch site at Plesetsk, in northwest Russia. (AW&ST Dec. 19, 1966,
p.19).
The group remains amateur in that it is an association of volunteers.
However many members are professionals. For example, Severance, a
student in 1979, now works in NASA manned mission operations at the
Johnson Space Center, in Houston.
The U.S. also has identified emergency landing sites for its space
shuttle orbiters. On every ascent to orbit, at least two landing sites
across the Atlantic Ocean are staffed by NASA personnel. The abort
landing sites, for which the U.S. has negotiated agreements, are in
Spain, Morocco and the Gambia, on the west coast of Africa.
In its planning for contingency landings once an orbiter is in space,
NASA prefers first a return to Edwards AFB, the Kennedy Space Center of
White Sands, N.M., then other runways on U.S. territory, then U.S. air
bases, and finally foreign facilities.
Informal agreements exist with about a dozen nations to cover such
emergencies, according to John Sakss, NASA's deputy chief of
international planning and programs. Occasionally, in messges sent up
to U.S. astronauts at the begining of each work day in orbit, they are
advised that certain landing sites have been ruled out for "political
reasons."
Mike H
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