The international space station or ISS has been up in Space for more than a decade and it has seen many people aboard it. Astronauts mostly go up there in shifts of 6 months but there is a lot of procedures and physics involved in the transportation of these astronauts.
Astronauts first board a Soyus rocket in Russia that takes them up into space. Since the ISS is moving around the Earth at 17,000 Km/hr its impossible for the launched soyuz module to straight away reach the ISS and dock. There are several burns that astronauts have to perform during the procedure.
The first step is to get the soyuz module to start orbitting the Earth. For orbitting the Earth the astronauts use up one of their several burns. The next step is to move towards the ISS. Now the astronauts have to perform burns at each half orbit points. So a burn at 180 degrees of the orbit and another burn at 360 degrees. This will allow the circumfrance of the Soyuz's orbit to increases allowing it to get closer to the ISS.
Finally when the Soyuz rocket is inline with the ISS the astronauts apply another burn that allows the Soyuz rocket to get ahead of the ISS. Now the soyuz rocket is supposed to rotate so that the hatch faces the dock of the ISS. A final burn procedure is performed to get the Soyuz closer to the ISS and ultimately the module is docked.
It typically takes around 30-35 minutes for the entire docking procedure and the soyuz is continuously monitored from the ground to ensure that the angles are correct. A slight micalculation can be disastrous.
Later this month Scott Kelly and two other astronauts will be travelling to the Space station which is what made me write this post cause surely people might want to know whats happening through the journey from Earth to ISS.
Thanks for reading!
