
Scorched from reentry, this is the external heat shield for the attitude control thrusters from the landing capsule of the inaugural flight of the Soyuz TMA spacecraft.
A technical malfunction caused the Soyuz control system to abandon the gentler aerodynamic reenrty and instead it reverted to a harsher ballistic free-fall descent. This resulted in a steep and off target landing of the spacecraft. The craft landed 300 miles short of the planned area, and the crew was subjected to severe gravitational loads.
Communication with the Soyuz was lost because one antenna was ripped off during descent, and two more did not deploy. The crew regained communications through an emergency transmitter after landing. (from Wikipedia)
This panel was removed after landing. Engineers analyzed the failure in the flight control system and found that a failure in the avionics caused the free-fall descent, not pilot error as initially claimed. “The small attitude control thrusters onboard the capsule functioned properly, however in accordance with the computer commands, they provided attitude for ballistic reentry rather than aerodynamic mode. All tests conducted on the ground failed to reproduce the phenomena encountered during the landing of the Soyuz TMA-1.” (RussianSpaceWeb)
Update: As I recently learned from an astronaut involved with the mission (see below), the thrusters of this panel were used to spin up the capsule for a ballistic reentry.




Ed Lu’s
And here is the recovery beacon antenna cover from the same mission: 
Leave a Reply to jurvetson Cancel reply