Zarya

Zarya (Russian: Заря́; lit. Red Sky Glow, Aurora, Sunrise), also known as the Functional Cargo Block or FGB (from the Russian "Функционально-грузовой блок", Funktsionalno-gruzovoy blok or ФГБ), was the first module of the International Space Station to be launched. The FGB provided electrical power, storage, propulsion, and guidance to the ISS during the initial stage of assembly. With the launch and assembly in orbit of other modules with more specialized functionality, Zarya is now primarily used for storage, both inside the pressurized section and in the externally mounted fuel tanks. The Zarya is a descendant of the TKS spacecraft designed for the Russian Salyut program. The name Zarya, which means sunrise, was given to the FGB because it signified the dawn of a new era of international cooperation in space. Although it was built by a Russian company, it is owned by the United States.

Construction

The FGB design was originally intended as a module for the Russian Mir space station, but was not flown as of the end of the Mir program. A FGB cargo block was incorporated as an upper stage engine into the Polyus spacecraft, flown (unsuccessfully) on the first Energia launch. With the end of the Mir program, the design was adapted to use for the International Space Station.

Zarya (opera)

Zarya (Russian Заря, English Dawn), also known by its German language title Die Morgenröte der Freiheit (The Dawn of Freedom), is a opera in four acts composed between 1873 and 1877 by Ella Adayevskaya (the pseudonym adopted by the composer Elizaveta von Schultz).

Composition

The opera, which was listed by Adayevskaya as her Op. 8, has a libretto by Richard Genée, translated into Russian by Adayevskaya herself. A manuscript piano score bears the title, in German, Die Morgenröte der Freiheit. The opera bears a dedication to Tsar Alexander II.

Synopsis

The opera takes place in Little Russia (present-day Ukraine) in 1762. Olga and Pierre have loved each other since childhood, but he is a serf and not of the legal social status to marry her. Olga is encouraged to marry the wicked Nyrkoff, and eventually agrees to do so if he will arrange Pierre's freedom. However, when Pierre learns of Olga's potential sacrifice for his sake, he commits suicide. The marriage is therefore forestalled and Olga retires to a convent, leaving Nyrkoff to his rancour. The opera ends with a prophetic chorus of peasants praising Alexander II's 1861 abolition of serfdom.

Zarya (spacecraft)

The Zarya spacecraft was a secret Soviet project of the late 1980s aiming to design and build a large, manned, vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) reusable space capsule, a much larger replacement for the Soyuz spacecraft. The project was shelved in 1989, "on the eve of the Soviet Union's collapse."

After the project was shelved in January 1989, for financial reasons, the name was reused for Zarya, the first of the components of the International Space Station.

Design

The Zarya spacecraft would have differed from all previous spacecraft by having an array of a dozen rockets engines for making a soft landing upon return to Earth, without using a parachute.

Mission

Zarya spacecraft would have brought crew and supplies to Mir, or supplies only in automated mode. It would have had a normal crew of one or two, and offered the possibility of carrying a maximum of eight to twelve if used as a Mir lifeboat.

Zarya Chronology

1985 January 27