Places · Landing site
Soyuz recovery area
Crews returning from the station come down under parachute onto flat steppe, with retro-rockets firing a metre above the ground. Recovery helicopters are usually there within minutes.
- Where
- Steppe near Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan
- Coordinates
- 47.80°N 67.72°E
- Since
- 1967
- On the map
- Show me
- More
- roscosmos.ru
The sky from here
Measured at these coordinates the sky is zone 5: suburban, which is Bortle 5–6 and a naked-eye limit of about magnitude 5.2–6.0. The Milky Way is invisible or nearly so. Clouds are lit from below. You can read a newspaper outside on a clear night.
Of the 110 Messier objects, 15 are an unaided-eye target from a sky this dark, 82 are comfortable in 10×50s and 85 in a 130mm reflector. You would have to get roughly 22 km east before the sky reaches Bortle 2.
Every night of the year reaches full astronomical darkness at this latitude; the Sun always gets its eighteen degrees below the horizon, which places much further from the equator cannot say.
The centre of the galaxy only ever reaches 13° above the horizon from here, so the richest part of the Milky Way is always seen through the thickest air. It is the single biggest difference between this sky and one further south. Of the 110 Messier objects, 16 never set from here and every one of them rises at some point in the year.
Sunflower Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy and Cat's Eye Galaxy pass close to the zenith from this latitude — an object at the zenith is being seen through the least air it will ever be seen through, and the difference against the same object low in the south is not subtle.
Whirlpool Galaxy, Little Dumbbell and Pinwheel Galaxy never set from this latitude, so they are available on any clear night of the year rather than for one season of it.
Read at 47.80°N 67.72°E. Darkness is estimated rather than measured; everything else follows from the latitude and holds along the whole parallel. How accurate this is.
Nearby
Questions
What part of the sky never rises at Soyuz recovery area?
Everything south of declination −42°. From 47.8°N that is a cap 48° in radius centred on the south celestial pole, which is 16% of the whole celestial sphere. It is out of reach permanently rather than seasonally: no time of year and no instrument brings it above the horizon. The matching 16% around the north celestial pole is the same geometry inverted, and never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does Soyuz recovery area get?
From about 1 hours 33 minutes at the thin end of the year, near 21 June, up to 11 hours 49 minutes around 21 December. Astronomical darkness is the Sun more than eighteen degrees below the horizon, which is a stricter thing than the Sun being down. Unlike sites further from the equator, no part of the year here is written off entirely.
What has to be in orbit to come down at Soyuz recovery area?
Only orbits of 47.8° or steeper. The ground track of an orbit swings between latitudes 47.8° north and south of the equator and no further, which puts 47.8°N outside the reach of anything shallower — a plane change would have to come first, and plane changes are the most expensive manoeuvre in the catalogue. The steeper the orbit, the more often the track passes overhead and the more return opportunities there are.
How far is Soyuz recovery area from the other sites on this map?
The nearest is Baikonur Cosmodrome, about 392 km to the south-west. The nearest other landing site is Dongfeng landing site, 2,660 km to the east. Measured as the great circle between coordinates, which is the shortest path across the surface and rarely the one you could travel.