MINSK, 25 March (BelTA) - The flight of the Belarusian cosmonaut is a step in the development of the country, Russian astronomer, associate professor of the Physics Department of Moscow State University Vladimir Surdin said in an interview to Belarus 1 TV channel, BelTA has learned.
“I want to congratulate my Belarusian colleagues. This is a great achievement. The flight of a Belarusian cosmonaut is the next step in the development of the country. I hope that this is the first successful, but far from the last step in space by Belarusian science and technology. Congratulations!” Vladimir Surdin said.
Speaking about the postponement of the launch of the flight with the participation of the Belarusian representative, Vladimir Surdin noted that the flight postponement is a standard situation. “This is a very tense moment, a very heavy load on the equipment. If some tiniest detail is not perfect, does not meet the computer's demands accurately, of course, the flight should be postponed,” the astronomer emphasized.
According to him, postponements happen regularly. “They may happen repeatedly. Even such a great space engineer like Ilon Musk, experienced engineers and NASA, Roscosmos, Chinese taikonauts very often postpone flights,” Vladimir Surdin added. Reasons can be different. “Reasons include winds exceeding permissible limits, high or low clouds which makes it difficult to follow the spacecraft flight, and so on. There is nothing unusual about this. Flight postponement is a fairly regular procedure. After all, this is not a flight to another planet, when the planet can leave the intended place and we will be unable to reach it physically. The ISS is always close to us. It is always close to the Earth - at a distance of 400 kilometers. It orbits the Earth every 90 minutes. So we can postpone a flight for a few or 24 hours. It is necessary to make sure that the equipment is 100% reliable, and only then it is possible to start the flight,” the expert said.
In his words, the shortest journey to the space station must be precisely timed to get the ISS passing approximately over the rocket launch site. “If the flight is aborted, the Earth will rotate, and it will need to orbit several times to return to the desired configuration. This is called a long flight, and there is nothing wrong with it. The Soyuz spacecraft is designed to maintain the life of cosmonauts for many days. They will just spend more time in the spacecraft to finally rendezvous the ISS. The spacecraft is cramped, but cosmonauts and astronauts have flown like this many times,” Vladimir Surdin said.
