The campaign for the selection of cosmonauts starts on March 14, 2017 - the Interdepartmental Commission decided to hold the Yu.A. Gagarin” (TsPK) of the competition for the selection of candidates for the Roscosmos cosmonaut corps in 2017. This was reported on the Roscosmos website.
The goal is to select the best specialists who, having skills in working with space and / or aviation technology, will become the first pilots of the new Russian Federation spacecraft, will work under the International Space Station (ISS) program, and will also become the first Russians to fly to Moon.
According to the terms of the competition, it is planned to select six to eight people who will complement the Roscosmos cosmonaut corps.
The contestants have to go through several stages. The selection for compliance with the requirements for education and professional suitability provides that applicants for astronaut candidates have the totality of knowledge necessary for the successful completion of professional training programs for astronauts. A complex of medical examinations will allow for the next stage of selection of applicants. Successful completion of a set of measures that allow assessing the psychological qualities of applicants is a necessary condition for winning the competition. Candidates will also be required to pass a physical fitness test.
General requirements:
A citizen of the Russian Federation may be a candidate for cosmonaut of the Russian Federation.
The age of applicants must not exceed 35 years.
Applicants must have a higher education in engineering, science or flight specialties and have work experience. Priority in the selection is given to persons with experience in the aviation and space industry of the Russian Federation.
Applicants must meet the following requirements for subsequent preparation for space flight, in particular:
have the ability to study space technology (demonstrate the ability to understand the basics and principles of building technical systems, understanding their physical essence, the ability to memorize technical information, terminology and technical characteristics);
have knowledge of interaction with computer equipment;
know a foreign language (English) within the framework of the requirements of programs of non-linguistic universities of the Russian Federation, etc.
The full list of requirements for candidates and the list of required documents can be found on the website of the State Corporation Roscosmos and CPC (https://www.roscosmos.ru/media/files/docs/2017/prikaz.244.pdf).
The main stages of the selection of candidates for cosmonauts of Roscosmos will be held on the basis of the TsPK im. Yu.A. Gagarin.
Documents are sent by mail with notification or delivered by the applicant personally to the address: 141160, Moscow Region, Star City, to the head of the Yu.A. Gagarin" with the note "To the commission for the selection of candidates for cosmonauts."
The Roscosmos cosmonaut selection campaign started in 2017. Deadline August 31, 2017.
The purpose of the competition is to select the best specialists who, having skills in working with space and / or aviation technology, will become the first pilots of the new Russian Federation spacecraft, will work under the International Space Station (ISS) program, and will also become the first Russians to fly to the moon.
According to the terms of the competition, it is supposed to select six to eight people who will complement the ROSCOSMOS cosmonaut corps.
The contestants have to go through several stages. The selection for compliance with the requirements for education and professional suitability provides that applicants for astronaut candidates have the totality of knowledge necessary for the successful completion of professional training programs for astronauts. A complex of medical examinations will allow for the next stage of selection of applicants. Successful completion of a set of measures that allow assessing the psychological qualities of applicants is a necessary condition for winning the competition. Candidates will also be required to pass a physical fitness test.
General requirements:
- A citizen of the Russian Federation may be a candidate for cosmonaut of the Russian Federation.
- The age of applicants must not exceed 35 years.
- Applicants must have a higher education in engineering, science or flight specialties and have work experience.
- Priority in the selection is given to persons with experience in the aviation and space industry of the Russian Federation.
- Applicants must meet the following requirements for subsequent preparation for space flight, in particular:
- have the ability to study space technology (demonstrate the ability to understand the basics and principles of building technical systems, understanding their physical essence, the ability to memorize technical information, terminology and technical characteristics);
- have knowledge of interaction with computer equipment;
- know a foreign language (English) within the framework of the requirements of programs of non-linguistic universities of the Russian Federation, etc.
A complete list of requirements for candidates and a list of required documents can be found on the website and the CPC.
The main stages of selection of candidates for ROSCOSMOS cosmonauts will be held on the basis of the TsPK im. Yu.A. Gagarin.
Documents are sent by mail with notification or delivered by the applicant personally to the address: 141160, Moscow Region, Star City, to the head of the Yu.A. Gagarin" with the note "To the commission for the selection of candidates for cosmonauts."
The campaign for the selection of cosmonauts starts on March 14, 2017 - the Interdepartmental Commission decided to hold the Yu.A. Gagarin” (TsPK) of the competition for the selection of candidates for the ROSCOSMOS cosmonaut corps in 2017.
The goal is to select the best specialists who, having skills in working with space and / or aviation technology, will become the first pilots of the new Russian Federation spacecraft, will work under the International Space Station (ISS) program, and will also become the first Russians to fly to Moon.
According to the terms of the competition, it is supposed to select six to eight people who will complement the ROSCOSMOS cosmonaut corps.
The contestants have to go through several stages. The selection for compliance with the requirements for education and professional suitability provides that applicants for astronaut candidates have the totality of knowledge necessary for the successful completion of professional training programs for astronauts. A complex of medical examinations will allow for the next stage of selection of applicants. Successful completion of a set of measures that allow assessing the psychological qualities of applicants is a necessary condition for winning the competition. Candidates will also be required to pass a physical fitness test.
GENERAL REQUIREMENTS:
- A citizen of the Russian Federation may be a candidate for cosmonaut of the Russian Federation.
- The age of applicants must not exceed 35 years.
- Applicants must have a higher education in engineering, science or flight specialties and have work experience. Priority in the selection is given to persons with experience in the aviation and space industry of the Russian Federation.
- Applicants must meet the following requirements for subsequent preparation for space flight, in particular:
- have the ability to study space technology (demonstrate the ability to understand the basics and principles of building technical systems, understanding their physical essence, the ability to memorize technical information, terminology and technical characteristics);
- have knowledge of interaction with computer equipment;
- know a foreign language (English) within the framework of the requirements of programs of non-linguistic universities of the Russian Federation, etc.
The full list of requirements for candidates and the list of required documents can be found on the website of the State Corporation ROSCOSMOS and the CPC.
The main stages of selection of candidates for ROSCOSMOS cosmonauts will be held on the basis of the TsPK im. Yu.A. Gagarin.
Documents are sent by mail with notification or delivered by the applicant personally to the address: 141160, Moscow Region, Star City, to the head of the Yu.A. Gagarin" with the note "To the commission for the selection of candidates for cosmonauts."
"Applications and documents (copies of originals) from applicants for selection are accepted until August 31, 2017," the statement said.
Earlier it was reported that the state corporation Roscosmos and the Cosmonaut Training Center decided to extend the selection of applicants for joining the cosmonaut corps, but the deadline for accepting documents was not called.
Applications were originally supposed to end on July 14, three months after the call was announced.
It was reported that the Cosmonaut Training Center received about 300 applications with documents from those wishing to get into the cosmonaut corps.
In total, it is planned to select six to eight people in the detachment. The candidates will be determined by the end of the year.
About selection
In March of this year, Roscosmos announced a new open recruitment for the Russian cosmonaut corps for the first flights on the new Federation spacecraft to the ISS and to the Moon. The contestants will go through several stages - selection for education and professional suitability, medical examinations, assessment of psychological qualities, testing for physical fitness. The detachment will select citizens of the Russian Federation not older than 35 years and having higher education in engineering, scientific or flight specialties and work experience. Priority in the selection is given to persons with experience in the aviation and space industry in Russia.
Also, applicants must have the ability to study space technology, be able to work with computer technology, and also know English. A complete list of requirements can be found on the websites of Roscosmos and the Cosmonaut Training Center.
As Sergei Krikalev, executive director for manned space programs at Roscosmos, said earlier, there will be no restrictions on gender or race for cosmonaut candidates.
There are currently 27 people in the Russian cosmonaut corps, 12 of whom have no space flight experience. Five more cosmonauts flew into space once, seven made two flights each, one was in orbit three times (Oleg Kononenko), and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin has four orbital flights.
This is already the 17th recruitment to the Russian cosmonaut corps. The last time selection was made in 2012. Then it was the first open one - anyone could apply, and not just military pilots and employees of the rocket and space industry. Of the 304 volunteers, eight people were selected, of which six are still in the detachment.
According to the information published on May 4, more than 30 people have already sent all the necessary documents to pass the selection for cosmonauts in 2017. Until July 14, the last day for accepting documents, there are still a little more than two months, and the intrigue remains - how many applications will be submitted in comparison with the previous set of 2012? On the one hand, according to the sensations, they became more interested in space. On the other hand, sad news like the reduction of the Russian ISS crew and the departure of experienced cosmonauts from the detachment may scare someone away. In the meantime, the acceptance of documents is underway, it's time to see what those who will pass the selection will do.
Training on the Soyuz simulator, a frame from the ESA video
Who is the last in space?
The first cosmonauts and astronauts were fine - the most successful could go on a flight a little more than a year after enrolling in the detachment. For Gagarin, this period was a year and a month, Titov - a year and five months, and for Alan Shepard - two years and one month. But now you have to wait for your turn for a flight for years. The volume of what you need to learn (and pass the exam on this) has increased. But, most importantly, there is a long line of those who came to the detachment before you and have not yet flown. In the Russian cosmonaut corps, Nikolai Tikhonov from the 2006 recruitment is still waiting for his turn. And due to the fact that now there will be only one cosmonaut on the Soyuz in the coming years, while already experienced and flying ones are being appointed, which prolongs Nikolai's expectation into the unknown. In general, if you think about it, the specifics of working as an astronaut is that your flight depends on many events or even accidents that cannot be calculated in advance. Astronaut Dick Slayton from the first American detachment has been waiting for his flight for sixteen years, and this is not the limit. Astronaut Don Lind was constantly on canceled missions or assigned as a stand-in for "disappointingly healthy" people and flew after 19 years on the force. And the waiting record belongs to the only cosmonaut of independent Ukraine, Leonid Kadenyuk, who was able to go into space 21 years and 3 months after being enrolled in the Soviet cosmonaut corps in 1976. And a very large number of people could not wait, dropping out for health or other reasons. For the 2017 recruitment, the waiting period is predicted to be 15 years, a third longer than expected for the 2012 recruitment, of which no one has yet flown.What to do while waiting?
But one should not think that being in the cosmonaut corps is lazy doing nothing while waiting for one's turn. On the contrary, the work will be above the roof, and it will not work to hack on it. The first two years after enrollment in the detachment will be devoted to general space training - flight theory, control systems, navigation, the principles of creating spacecraft, launch vehicles and launch complexes, basic knowledge of the ship on which they will fly, and initial skills in working with its systems. After the course, there will be a state exam, and it is not recommended to pass it less than “excellent” - the title of astronaut may not be awarded and, at best, will be sent to additional classes.The second stage - training in specialization groups, takes from two years. Previously, there were many directions, but now there is only one specialization - the ISS. The third stage is training in the crews. At this level, the crew has already been formed, and there is relatively little time left before the flight, about two years. But the need to study does not disappear anywhere - cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov in a recent interview spoke about 120 exams. At later stages, more practice on Soyuz and ISS simulators. As a result, the cosmonaut will know his ship, the ISS, and the flight experiments at a sufficient level. It was possible to train crews for Space Shuttle flights according to a relatively short program, having worked out a list of operations for three weeks, but this approach does not work for six-month missions to the ISS - it is necessary to produce a widely trained specialist.
In parallel with the preparation, special trainings are held. It is obvious that for work in weightlessness it would be very useful to feel it at least for a while. There are special zero gravity laboratory aircraft for this. Movement along a parabola allows you to create weightlessness for thirty seconds and train.
The opposite of weightlessness, training in a centrifuge has been carried out from the very beginning of the profession of an astronaut. When launching into orbit, the astronauts will experience about 3 "ge", during a regular landing - 4-5, during a ballistic descent - about 9, and the operation of the emergency rescue system in the event of an accident at the start will give a short-term overload in the region of 10 "ge", and to all this gotta be ready. At the same time, they will not simply endure overloads - in the booth they will check the sharpness and field of view, as well as the reaction time.
A relatively large amount of time is devoted to survival training in various terrain. Despite the fact that ships have been landing in a given area for a very long time (in the extreme case, in a regular place of an abnormal ballistic descent in the same Kazakh steppe), in the event of a serious accident, they will have to land where they can, and no one wants cosmonauts without equipment to lie down to die in the snow, as it was very much in the "Time of the First". On the contrary, they must unpack emergency supplies and stay alive until rescuers arrive.
For winter planting, there is a training base in the suburbs.
Most of the Earth's surface is occupied by oceans, and despite the fact that the Soyuz can stay on the water for a long time, evacuation still needs to be worked out.
In addition, there are trainings for the desert terrain, and recently survival in mountainous terrain has been added to the training program.
And if Belyaeva and Leonova did not dare to evacuate by helicopter from the hover mode, now this method is definitely being worked out.
The work of an astronaut requires maintaining clarity of thought in conditions of mortal danger. Therefore, experience in aviation, parachuting or extreme sports is welcome in the selection. Already in the detachment, under conditions of controlled danger of a parachute jump, the ability not to lose one's head is tested and trained. In free fall, it is necessary to solve fairly simple problems, a record is kept, and its results often surprise the subject. The stories of the astronauts talk about how people for some reason began to solve the card again or, for example, they said something like “I’ll solve this later.”
NASA uses T-38 supersonic training aircraft to train astronauts and fly them around the country. In Russia, less time is allocated for flight training, and subsonic L-39s are used for flights, but the experience of flying, for the same reasons of making decisions in conditions of controlled danger, was not completely ruled out.
An interesting and not particularly well-known type of special space training is the training of astronauts in photography and video filming. A special plane rises to a height, and the astronauts learn to take pictures of the earth from the air, which is not very different from photographing from orbit.
Even if there is no spacewalk in the flight program, it may be needed in an emergency. And as the first attempts showed, it would be at least very difficult to perform work outside the station in a spacesuit without preparation. Therefore, it is better to practice in advance. As it turned out, the best training is a hydro laboratory, where you can create the so-called neutral buoyancy underwater. At the same time, gravity will not disappear, and it will be uncomfortable to work, for example, upside down, but the skills of moving along the handrails and working with tools will be as similar as possible to those that will be required in a real flight.
In order for the flight to be truly safe, astronauts “die” dozens and hundreds of times during training in simulators, figuring out from their own experience how and in what order to respond to emerging emergency situations so that a seemingly innocent and frivolous accident does not become the cause your real death.
But in the cosmonaut corps you can look at space technology that is still being developed. And not just to watch, but to take part in its development.
In addition, you will have to travel a lot. Chris Hadfield in his memoirs estimates time on business trips at 70%, Pavel Vinogradov says that "the family does not see an astronaut for years." The ISS is an international station, therefore, in preparation for the flight, you need to undergo a month-long internship in Russia and the USA, as well as a two-week internship in Europe and Japan, and this is only the bare minimum. Foreign astronauts can spend half a year in Star City every year, ours also have places where they should definitely go.
Oh, and don't forget the public relations. A flying astronaut can be involved in a wide variety of activities, and non-flying ones can even act as guides at the Cosmonaut Training Center.
