ISSCOM 23 December 2009 (067)

2nd Flightday S-TMA17, 22 December 2009

During this night the snowboys at Rotterdam Airport kept quiet. Regretfully there was not much radiotraffic from the Soyuz. Only during 2 passes for my position the Pulsars (so not Olimps – see remark 2 below) used the downlink to TsUP. That traffic was not too significant.

S-TMA17 pass in orbit 17 from 0044-0053UTC.

Kotov collates a series times for communication sessions with tracking stations. He also reports that the reception of signals from TsUP are poor.

S-TMA17 pass in orbit 18 from 0218-0224UTC.

Kotov reports that he received and understood all, but now and then the signal from TsUP was interrupted (QSB). He gives his best wishes to TsUP and says good-bye until the next comm. session.

The automatic approach and docking with the system Kurs took place on 22 December 2009 at 2248UTC, so 6 minutes earlier than expected. Just like so many others I followed this all without problems via NASA TV. To be sure not to miss eventual traffic between TsUP Moscow and ISS (Zvezda) and/or S-TMA17 I continued monitoring the 143.625 and 121.750 mc without avail.

Remark 1: During passes the Soyuz telemetry transmitter on 166.134 mc was active.

Remark 2: Correction: In an database of a flight of Kotov I found the call-sign Olimp and supposed that Kotov would use this one. But that call-sign belonged to Yurchikhin with whom Kotov flew in April 2007. The callsign of Kotov was then and now during the S-TMA17 flight also Pulsar.

Remark 3: If the Russians will continue to launch Soyuzy during the night hours, implying that I will have also to monitor Soyuz radiotraffic nocturnally, it might be possible that I have to stop this. For my not so young body a good nights’rest is indispensable.

Chris van den Berg, NL-9165