Soyuz TMA-15M: An Extended Journey to the Space Station

Soyuz TMA-15M transported long-stay crew to and from the International Space Station. Commander Anton Shkaplerov represented Russia’s Federal Space Agency, Terry Virts represented NASA, and Samantha Cristoforetti was an Italian ESA astronaut. They served in Expeditions 42 and 43; Virts commanded the station during Expedition 43. Roles aboard the spacecraft differed from roles aboard the station.

Preparation covered spacecraft operation, integration with other resident crews, monitoring approaching cargo vehicles and scientific experiments. Training included manual descent, evacuation after fire or depressurization, and survival after landings in different terrain. Cristoforetti’s Futura mission operated under arrangements between the Italian Space Agency and NASA, using ESA’s training and research framework.

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Launch from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, took place at 21:01 UTC on 23 November 2014; Moscow and Baikonur had already entered 24 November. The different launch dates in American and Russian reports largely reflected their time zones. The spacecraft separated from its launch vehicle approximately nine minutes after liftoff and approached the station on a four-orbit rendezvous profile.

At 02:48 UTC on 24 November, it docked automatically with the Rassvet Mini-Research Module in the Russian segment. The crew checked spacecraft and docking-interface pressure integrity and equalized pressure before opening the passage. Joining Wilmore, Samokutyayev and Serova restored the resident crew to six. Soyuz then remained docked in storage configuration for the eventual return.

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The station’s prolonged microgravity allowed this stay to continue studies involving successive expeditions. Experiments organized by ESA and Italy shared crew time with other countries’ equipment and researchers. The station hosted the research, while TMA-15M delivered and returned the people carrying it out.

In March 2015, Virts and Cristoforetti entered the Quest airlock for the Airway Monitoring experiment. At a pressure reduced by approximately thirty percent, they measured nitric oxide in exhaled air and compared it with preflight and earlier orbital data. Lars Karlsson of Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet led research into lung-monitoring methods under reduced gravity and pressure. Their data joined a continuing study intended to include eight astronauts, allowing comparison with other participants.

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The same period brought the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System, CATS, to the station. NASA Goddard researchers adapted airborne lidar experience for a station payload using high-repetition-rate lasers and photon-counting detection. A separate Dragon cargo flight delivered it in January 2015. Installed on the Japanese module’s exposed facility, its lasers first operated on 5 February, with more sustained science observations beginning on 10 February.

McGill and colleagues’ 2015 paper presents observations from 11 February over Africa: profiles showed Saharan dust reaching approximately five kilometers, thin cirrus above seventeen kilometers and biomass-burning smoke in southern Africa. An ER-2 aircraft carrying the Cloud Physics Lidar flew beneath the station to compare cloud boundaries and surface returns. Station power, cooling and data downlink thus supported independently checked Earth-observation records.

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Progress M-27M failed to complete its planned docking after launch on 28 April 2015. Investigations changed subsequent launch schedules and extended the stay of the three crew members, originally due home in May. ESA stated on 12 May that station supplies could support several more weeks while the crew awaited a revised return.

Experiments and maintenance continued, but extra time could not replace lost cargo. Shkaplerov’s flight summary lists forty-six Russian-segment experiments, thirty-eight involving crew and eight automatic. It also specifies that equipment for some experiments was lost with Progress M-27M, preventing completion of the entire scientific program. The delay prolonged the stay while missing equipment suspended some planned work.

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TMA-15M undocked at 10:20 UTC on 11 June 2015. After braking and module separation, only the descent module carried the three crew members into the atmosphere. Parachutes, near-ground braking rockets and seat cushioning reduced landing impact. ESA records touchdown at approximately 13:44 UTC on the Kazakh steppe, where recovery personnel helped the occupants leave the capsule.

The journey lasted approximately two hundred days. Padalka, Kornienko and Scott Kelly continued working aboard the station after their departure. Landing ended TMA-15M’s transport assignment, while experiments, calibration and data analysis begun during the stay continued through later crews and ground teams.

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