Soyuz TMA-7 (russian: Союз ТМА-7) was a transport mission for portions of the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...

(ISS) ''

Expedition 12 Expedition 12 (2005) was the 12th expedition to the International Space Station, launched from Kazakhstan using the Russian Soyuz TMA-7 spacecraft. The crew landed back in Kazakhstan on 8 April 2006 with the addition of the first Brazilian astron ...

'' crew launched October 1, 2005. The flight delivered ISS Commander William McArthur and ISS Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev to the station to replace ''

Expedition 11 Expedition 11 (2005) was the 11th expedition to the International Space Station, using the Soyuz TMA-6, which stayed during the expedition for emergency evacuation. European Space Agency Italian Astronaut Roberto Vittori launched with Expediti ...

'' crew members. Spaceflight Participant

Gregory Olsen Gregory Hammond Olsen (born April 20, 1945) is an American entrepreneur, engineer and scientist who, in October 2005, became the third private citizen to make a self-funded trip to the International Space Station with the company Space Adventure ...

joined the TMA-7 crew for the ascent and docking with the ISS, spent approximately eight days aboard conducting experiments, then returned to Earth with the outgoing members of ''Expedition 11'' aboard

Soyuz TMA-6 Soyuz TMA-6 was a human spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS). It carried three crew members of Expedition 11 to the International Space Station. It was the 26th crewed flight to the ISS. It was launched by a Soyuz FG and return ...

. McArthur and Tokarev were joined on their return trip to Earth by Flight Engineer

Marcos Pontes Marcos Cesar Pontes (born 11 March 1963) is a Brazilian Air Force pilot, engineer, AEB astronaut, politician and author. He became the first South American and the first Lusophone to go into space when he docked onto the International Space Sta ...

who launched aboard

Soyuz TMA-8 Soyuz TMA-8 was a Soyuz mission to the International Space Station (ISS) launched by a Soyuz FG launch vehicle. Crew Soyuz TMA-8 was a transport mission for portions of the International Space Station (ISS) '' Expedition 13'' crew. The fligh ...

and spent approximately seven days aboard the ISS conducting experiments for the

Brazilian Space Agency The Brazilian Space Agency ( pt, Agência Espacial Brasileira; AEB) is the civilian authority in Brazil responsible for the country's space program. It operates a spaceport at Alcântara, and a rocket launch site at Barreira do Inferno. It is ...

Crew

Docking with ISS

*Docked to ISS: October 3, 2005, 05:27 UTC (to Pirs module) *Undocked from ISS: November 18, 2005, 08:46 UTC (from Pirs module) *Docked to ISS: November 18, 2005, 09:05 UTC (to nadir port of Zarya) *Undocked from ISS: March 20, 2006, 06:49 UTC (from nadir port of Zarya) *Docked to ISS: March 20, 2006, 07:11 UTC (to aft port of Zvezda) *Undocked from ISS: April 8, 2006, 20:28 UTC (from aft port of Zvezda)

Mission highlights

28th crewed flight to ISS (Flight 11S). Soyuz TMA-7 is a Soyuz spacecraft which was launched on October 1, 2005 by a

Soyuz-FG The Soyuz-FG launch vehicle was an improved version of the Soyuz-U from the R-7 family of rockets, designed and constructed by TsSKB-Progress in Samara, Russia. Guidance, navigation, and control system was developed and manufactured by "Polis ...

rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The spacecraft carried two members of the

crew to the

, together with the

space tourist Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. During the period from 2001 to 2009, seven space tourists made eight s ...

. They replaced the

crew, Commander

Sergei Krikalev Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev (russian: Сергей Константинович Крикалёв, also transliterated as Sergei Krikalyov; born 27 August 1958) is a Russian mechanical engineer, former cosmonaut and former head of the Yuri Ga ...

and John Phillips. The last member of the original Expedition 12 crew,

Thomas Reiter Thomas Arthur Reiter (born 23 May 1958 in Frankfurt, West Germany) is a retired European astronaut and is a Brigadier General in the German Air Force currently working as ESA Interagency Coordinator and Advisor to the Director General at the ...

finally launched in July 2006 on

STS-121 STS-121 was a 2006 NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) flown by . The main purposes of the mission were to test new safety and repair techniques introduced following the ''Columbia'' disaster of February 2003 as w ...

. Owing to shuttle mechanical and weather delays, he was forced to move to

Expedition 13 Expedition 13 was the 13th expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), and launched at 02:30 UTC on 30 March 2006. The expedition used the Soyuz TMA-8 spacecraft, which stayed at the station for the duration of the expedition for emerge ...

. This was the last flight which is covered by the 1996 "balance" agreement that required the Russians to provide 11 Soyuz spacecraft to ferry joint U.S-Russian crews to and from the International Space Station. Further Soyuz flights needed a renegotiation between NASA and its Russian counterpart, and a modification of the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000. After re-entry, when the pilot parachute was deployed at a height of 10 km the main parachute took a while to open, which caused some concern among the crew and could have been fatal if the main parachute had taken longer to deploy.

Replica

A company in

Bauru Bauru () is a Brazilian municipality in midwestern region of the state of São Paulo. It is the main city of the mesoregion and microregion of Bauru. The population is 379,297 (2020 est.) in an area of 667.68 km². Established in 1896, ...

is building a replica of the capsule that brought Marcos Pontes back to Earth, but they wrongly describe it as the

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Soyuz TMA-07 Crewed Soyuz missions Spacecraft launched in 2005 Orbital space tourism missions Spacecraft which reentered in 2006 Spacecraft launched by Soyuz-FG rockets

Crew

Docking with ISS

Mission highlights

Replica

See also

References