Engineering:Soyuz TMA-18M

Short description: 2015 Russian crewed spaceflight to the ISS

Soyuz TMA-18M

Soyuz TMA-18M undocks from the ISS, 2 March 2016.
Operator	Roskosmos
COSPAR ID	2015-043A
SATCAT no.	40885
Mission duration	181d 23h 48m
Spacecraft properties
Spacecraft type	Soyuz-TMA 11F747 No.718
Manufacturer	RKK Energia
Crew
Crew size	3
Members	Sergey Volkov
Launching	Andreas Mogensen Aydyn Aimbetov
Landing	Mikhail Korniyenko Scott Kelly
Callsign	Eridan
Start of mission
Launch date	2 September 2015 04:37:42 UTC
Rocket	Soyuz-FG
End of mission
Landing date	2 March 2016 04:25:27 UTC
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Geocentric
Regime	Low Earth
Docking with ISS
Docking port	Poisk
Docking date	4 September 2015 07:42:00 UTC
Undocking date	2 March 2016 01:02:30 UTC
Time docked	179 days, 17 hours, 20 minutes
(l-r) Mogensen, Volkov and Aimbetov Soyuz programme (Crewed missions)

Soyuz TMA-18M was a 2015 Soyuz spaceflight to the International Space Station. It provided the two twelve-months occupants (Scott Kelly and Mikhail Korniyenko) at the International Space Station with a fresh Soyuz capsule. TMA-18M was the 127th flight of a Soyuz spacecraft; the first having occurred in 1967. The ascent flight consisted of a Russian commander and two flight engineers from Denmark (ESA) and Kazakhstan respectively. The flight launched in September 2015 and returned to Earth in March 2016.

The Kazakh Aidyn Aimbetov is of the first Kazakh cosmonaut class, and the first to fly. The ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen became the first Dane in space.

The descent crew was the same Russian commander and the two twelve-months occupants in March 2016. Two of the ascent crew members returned to Earth with Soyuz TMA-16M in September 2015.

Crew

Position	Launching Crew Member	Landing Crew Member
Commander	Sergey Volkov, RSA Expedition 45 Third and last spaceflight
Flight Engineer 1	Andreas Mogensen, ESA First spaceflight	Mikhail Korniyenko, RSA Expedition 46 Second and last spaceflight
Flight Engineer 2	Aidyn Aimbetov, KazCosmos N/A First spaceflight	Scott Kelly, NASA Expedition 46 Fourth and last spaceflight

Backup crew

Position	Crew Member
Commander	Oleg Skripochka, RSA
Flight Engineer 1	Thomas Pesquet, ESA
Flight Engineer 2	Sergey Prokopyev, RSA

Space tourist in the third seat

Originally the third member should have been the British singer Sarah Brightman as a space tourist, but on May 13, 2015, she announced she had withdrawn from training.

Japanese entrepreneur Satoshi Takamatsu trained as Sarah Brightman's backup, but he withdrew from the flight as the art projects he had planned to carry out would not be ready by the September launch date. He stated he would try for a later flight when his projects were ready to fly.

Russian businessman Filaret Galchev was offered the seat, but he realized that he didn't have the time to prepare himself for the flight.

Roscosmos chose the Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov as an alternative instead.

Landing

The spacecraft successfully landed on 2 March 2016 04:26 UTC, returning the ISS year long mission crew.

Later use

Today the spent Soyuz TMA-18M capsule is on display at the Danish Museum of Science & Technology in Elsinore.

See also

• 2015 in spaceflight