Vozvrashchayemi Apparat (VA): Soviet-era space capsule sells for 1 Million Euros

A Soviet-era space capsule that carried three cosmonauts into space in the 1970s fetched a million euros at auction on Wednesday.

The capsule went to an unidentified European buyer after bidding by telephone, Christine de Schaetzen, who heads German auction house Lempertz, told reporters after the first auction of its kind in Europe.

The historic piece dating back to the Soviet-US space race during the Cold War had been estimated at between one and two million dollars (700 to 1.4 million euros).

A British company first bought the 2.2-metre-high (seven feet) capsule, which was also used for a short unmanned mission in 1978 and then for training.

It was extensively restored with all trace removed of the searing burn marks it picked up on re-entry to the earth's atmosphere and re-painted to a pristine white.

The Vozvrashchayemi Apparat (VA) space capsule on display in Lempertz’s Brussels branch 

Image Courtesy Lempertz

Lempertz said it organised the sale to mark the opening of new offices in Brussels, aiming to attract attention with the highly unusual lot, known as Vozvrashchayemi Apparat (VA), or "re-entry capsule" in Russian.

Two more recent space suits also went under the hammer. One worn by anglo-American astronaut Michael Foale to reach the ISS international space station aboard a Soyuz in 2003 sold for 70,000 euros.

The other, used by cosmonaut Alexander Kalery for a flight to the MIR station in 1996, fetched 63,000 euros.

NASA ORION Space capsule: Recovery test in ocean suspended after issue

This Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2014 photo released by NASA shows crews testing a test version of Orion's forward bay cover, NASA's next-generation space capsule. 

NASA and the Navy suspended the test Thursday, Feb. 20, 2014 off the coast of San Diego after a problem was discovered. 

AP Photo/NASA

A training exercise designed to showcase the government's ability to recover a space capsule at sea was scrubbed after NASA ran into trouble off the Southern California coast, the space agency said Friday.

Crews had difficulty tying down a mock-up of the Orion capsule aboard an amphibious warship off the shores of San Diego.

NASA said cables attached to the capsule weren't strong enough to handle turbulence and snapped off twice while it was in the well deck of the USS San Diego before it could be moved out to sea on Thursday.

With the Orion mock-up still on the Navy ship, teams could not practice fetching the spacecraft from the ocean.

"Even though the testing didn't go as we had planned, we're learning lessons that will help us be better prepared to retrieve Orion," Bill Hill of NASA headquarters said in a statement.

Engineers were troubleshooting the problem, and it was not clear when the test would be rescheduled.

NASA has been developing a next-generation spacecraft to carry astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, possibly to an asteroid or Mars.

Orion, which will make its first unmanned test flight this fall, is being designed to travel to deep space and return at speeds of 25,000 mph (40,232 kph) by splashing down into the Pacific.

This Wednesday Feb. 19, 2014 photo released by NASA shows a test version of the Orion spacecraft, tethered inside the well deck of the USS San Diego prior to testing between NASA and the U.S. Navy. 

NASA and the Navy suspended the test Thursday, Feb. 20, 2014 off the coast of San Diego after a problem was discovered. AP Photo/NASA

The water landing is a throwback to the 1960s and 1970s when Navy ships routinely tracked and recovered Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft after re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

With the space shuttle fleet retired, NASA has decided to go with an ocean splashdown.

Unlike in the past, when helicopters would hoist astronauts after a mission, the new plan calls for an amphibious transport ship to dispatch divers and small boat teams to recover Orion and its crew.

Last year, NASA and the Navy practiced recovering the Orion in the calm waters of the Elizabeth River in Virginia with no problem.

Before the latest test was called off, NASA said crews successfully retrieved parts of the spacecraft, including the parachute and a protective covering.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden was supposed to visit the test site Saturday, but his appearance was cancelled.

Copenhagen Suborbitals: 'Beautiful Betty' Space Capsule LES Test

Watch live streaming video from csscph at livestream.com

A do-it-yourself spaceflight program called Copenhagen Suborbitals launched a homemade spacecraft 3,000 feet skyward this weekend and broadcast live video of the test.

Watch live streaming video from cssaarhus at livestream.com

Strapped inside the cone-shaped spacecraft, a capsule christened “Beautiful Betty,” with a camera-equipped crash-test dummy called Randy — a synthetic stand-in for program co-founders Peter Madsen and Kristian von Bengtson.

“This test was very complex and extremely interesting. In short, we launched our space capsule to an altitude of approximately 800-1,000 meters,” von Bengtson reports.

Copenhagen Suborbitals began broadcasting live video of the launch in the Baltic Sea, plus a feed from Randy’s imperiled vantage, around 3:00 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 12.

Von Bengtson and his team wanted to see if an emergency rocket strapped to the top of Beautiful Betty, formerly named Tycho Deep Space, could rescue a passenger during a life-threatening launch failure.

The emergency rocket is called Launch Escape System, and it has 80 kilonewtons of thrust — more than enough to carry the 6.6-foot-wide, 950-pound capsule and a 150-pound dummy high above the Earth.

Obviously, understanding what happens to Randy is a huge part of the effort so, the team placed accelerometers on the dummy to measure the forces exerted on it during the flight.

Another safety test item surrounds the capsule’s four big parachutes. Tests of the parachutes both on the ground and with a skydiver produced promising results but delays in configuring the chutes, prompted Copenhagen Suborbitals to push her launch back to this weekend.

The Launch Escape System rocketed Betty and Randy from a seafaring launch platform, lifting them to a height between 2,620 and 3,280 feet and then splashing down in the Baltic Sea.

At that point self-inflating bags emerged from Betty and righted the floating spacecraft.

The ultimate goal of Copenhagen Suborbitals is to safely launch a person 62 miles above the Earth — an unofficial demarcation line often called suborbital space, or the boundary between our planet and outer space.

The Launch Escape System follows the launch of a 19-foot-tall hybrid rocket, called SMARAGD-1, which proved a partial success.

“Things are going smoothly here,” von Bengtson confidently stated.