RSC Energia: Leader in New Spacecraft Name Competition is “GAGARIN”

The name GAGARIN for the new-generation Crew Transportation Spacecraft (CTS) is in the lead, according to preliminary results of public voting on the internet.

The latest stage of the creative competition was launched on December 4, 2015, and drew a lot of attention of Russian internet users.

Over a period of four days almost 18 thousand people have already cast their votes at the RSC Energia official web site (http://gagarin.energia.ru/konkurs-ptk-np.html) and on the official Roskosmos page in the social networking service VKontakte (www.vk.com/roscosmos).

4400 people proposed to name the new spacecraft after the first spaceman of the planet Yuri Gagarin. Behind “GAGARIN” come “VECTOR” (2531 votes), “FEDERATSIA” (Federation) (1967 votes), “ASTRA” (1665 votes), “GALACTICA” (Galaxy)(1489 votes), “RODINA” (Motherland)(1315 votes), “MIR” (Peace)(1261 votes), “ZODIAC” (1199 votes), “ZVEZDA” (Star)(911 votes) and “LEADER” (793 votes).

This stage of an open public voting will last till December 23, 2015.

The author of the best name will be awarded the top prize – a visit to Baikonur offering an opportunity to witness the launch of a manned transportation spacecraft Soyuz to the International Space Station in the spring of 2016.

The creativity competition for the best name of the new-generation Crew Transportation Spacecraft (CTS) was organized by RSC Energia with participation of Roscosmos and URSC.

The competition began on August 27, 2015. Altogether, about 6000 names were proposed, out of which the organizing committee selected ten for the public voting.

The results of the competition will be announced on January 15, 2016.

Additional information about the competition is posted on the official web site of RSC Energia (www.energia.ru).

The new-generation Crew Transportation Spacecraft (CTS) developed by RSC Energia is intended for delivery of people and cargo to the Moon and a space station in a low Earth orbit.

The spacecraft is reusable, its design incorporates advanced technologies, some of which are without equals in the world’s space industry. In particular, the CTS reentry vehicle will be made of composite materials, and have a reusable docking assembly. State-of-the-art avionics will allow meeting the challenges of the spacecraft rendezvous and docking in a more efficient manner, and improving the crew safety during launch and return to Earth.

The CTS crew can be as large as 4. The spacecraft will be able to stay in free flight for a period of up to 30 days, and stay attached to a space station for a period of up to 1 year. The total mass of the spacecraft during its flight to the space station will be 14.4 metric tons (19 tons during a mission to the Moon), the mass of the reentry vehicle will be 9 metric tons. The length of the spacecraft is 6.1 meters. The nominal g-load during descent is 3g. The spacecraft orbital insertion is to be performed by the heavy launch vehicle Angara-A5V.

JSC RSC Energia: the leader in the rocket and space industry, and the prime contractor for manned space systems. The Corporation conducts work on the development of unmanned space and rocket systems (launch vehicles and orbital transfer vehicles), and high-technology systems for various non-space applications. Since August 2014, the Corporation is headed by Vladimir Lvovich Solntsev.