Russian modules can become the basis for a promising lunar station instead of being sent to the ISS, Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Roskosmos state corporation, told reporters."As for the next modules, whether they will be sent to the ISS, or will they become a prototype for creating modules that can operate in the orbit of the moon, this is a good question that we started discussing now," Rogozin said at a press conference at the Vostochny spaceport .According to him, we are talking about scientific energy and nodal modules.
https://twitter.com/anik1982space/status/1265737827976916993
From today's Rogozin in the Solovyov LIVE channel: - it is planned to create a new Russian near-Earth station after 2030, it will include the Nodal and Scientific and Energy Modules.
As our subscribers already know, the launch of Roscosmos' UM Prichal module is now planned for September 6, 2021 (almost exactly a year from now)...
https://ria.ru/20200930/mks-1577975397.htmlGoogle translate:Quote"The launch of the multipurpose laboratory module "Science" is scheduled for April 20, 2021, and the "Prichal" nodal module - for September 14, 2021," the agency's source said.
"The launch of the multipurpose laboratory module "Science" is scheduled for April 20, 2021, and the "Prichal" nodal module - for September 14, 2021," the agency's source said.
https://twitter.com/anik1982space/status/1323304275716546561
Deputy Director of the Department of Manned Programs of Roscosmos Vladimir Daneev announced the timing of the launch of Russian modules to the ISS:- Multipurpose laboratory "Science" (MLM-U Nauka) - end of April 2021;- Junction "Berth" (UM Prichal)- September 2021;- Scientific and energy (NEM) - 2024.
Note that Progress M-UM (№303) slated to carry Prichal received modernisation upgrades in order to match that of Progress-MS so that it can perform a docking using the successor KURS-NP (Station)/KURS-NA (Russian VV and modules) antennas for its automated docking. It is now per the NK forums/schedule as well as the NSF schedule been given the updated designation Progress MS-UM (№303) to reflect those and other upgrades.
What function does this module provide now that the N.E.M. modules are no longer to be part of the I.S.S.?
Quote from: Stan Black on 07/30/2021 12:46 pmWhat function does this module provide now that the N.E.M. modules are no longer to be part of the I.S.S.?Additional docking ports, storage, perhaps even a contingency airlock.
Quote from: Lars-J on 07/30/2021 11:46 pmQuote from: Stan Black on 07/30/2021 12:46 pmWhat function does this module provide now that the N.E.M. modules are no longer to be part of the I.S.S.?Additional docking ports, storage, perhaps even a contingency airlock.Additional docking ports for visiting vehicles would definitely be handy. It'd require adapters to convert the sturdier/larger-passthrough hybrid ports (designed for module attachment) to the standard SSVP ports used by Russian visiting vehicles, but that's simple enough. Nauka has one on its nadir port now (to be removed and disposed by a Progress before NM/Prichal arrives).Since the central docking probe/cone are the same between hybrid and SSVP ports, the adapter only needs to convert the outer "collar" ring used for hard docking - much simpler than, by contrast, the IDAs to convert APAS-95 to IDS on the US side. (Which is to say, it's probably something that can be whipped up in any competent machine shop, rather than "the tooling doesn't exist any more so we've only got spares from the '80s".)The need for extra visiting-vehicle docking ports is more acute on the USOS right now than on the ROS, but it's probably still tighter than they'd like now that they're trying to avoid Zvezda-aft due to the leaks. So a couple extra SSVP ports on Prichal could be useful.What would be really useful, though, is some extra IDS-compatible ports that can host modern visiting vehicles. With both cargo and crew Dragons using docking ports now instead of berthing, port traffic seems to be a major limiting factor now for expanding private ISS flights (particularly long-duration ones). Right now, if a private crew visiting the ISS needs to send up supporting cargo on a private flight, the cargo flight has to arrive first, get unloaded by expedition astronauts, and then depart to make room for the private crew. Things would be a lot more flexible if one or more cargo ships could be docked alongside two crew ships. HTV-X is apparently also going to be docking (with IDS) instead of berthing, further exacerbating the situation.Russia has its own implementation of IDS (which they continue to call "APAS" since its design lineage is closer to APAS than how Boeing and SpaceX chose to implement IDS), and as I understand it, Prichal is designed such that its ports can easily be converted to that standard. If they were to equip, say, two of the four radial Prichal ports for IDS compatibility, I'm sure the commercial market would happily pay to dock at them and provide a nice stream of revenue for Roscosmos.The biggest obstacle would be not the mechanical interface but the station-side autonomous rendezvous hardware which needs to be mounted for vehicles to approach it. While the port itself is standardized by IDS for compatibility, the method of autonomous rendezvous is (to my knowledge) not. Hence the U.S. commercial crew program came up with its own standard (the C2V2 system used by Dragon and Starliner); I'm guessing Russia plans to instead use some evolution of Kurs and TORU. So any hypothetical IDS-compatible ports on Prichal would either need to be outfitted with American C2V2 hardware, or Dragon would need to be modified to talk to Kurs. Either option could present political difficulties (especially with the squawk Roscosmos made about uncrewed Dragon approaches being "unsafe" due to not having a TORU-style teleoperated backup mode).On the other hand, manually docking Dragon/Starliner to an IDS port on Prichal would be straightforward (as the crews have to train for manual dockings anyway). Wouldn't work for cargo Dragons, but those could continue to go to the IDAs on the US side.Probably not likely to happen given all the political hoops that would need to be jumped through, but fun to speculate about anyway.
What kind of docking port they have on Nauka's nadir?
Ok, if Roscosmos says they will NOT add any other modules after this one - then WHY they are going to add A NODE ?
