|
|
 |
ISS Crew Back to Earth
April 30, the Soyuz TMA-3 capsule with three astronauts aboard made a flawless landing in the steppes of Kazakhstan.
The astronauts landed softly and were in good spirits, RIA Novosti quotes mission control spokesman.
The capsule carried Expedition 8 commander American astronaut Michael Foale and Russian flight engineer Alexander Kaleri, who had spent some six months on the ISS as well as European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers of the Netherlands, who was returning after a nine-day mission on the station.
The astronauts have abandoned the landing craft and are staying in a mobile hospital, first deputy head of the Energiya Space Corporation Nikolai Zelenschikov said to RIA Novosti.
Foale, Kaleri and Kuipers entered the capsule Thursday night, having handed control of the ISS to the new crew, Russian Gennady Padalka and American Michael Fincke, who had arrived nine days earlier.
Strapped into their seats, they began their swift descent about 3 1/2 hours before landing near the town of Arkalyk on the vast, wide-open steppes of Kazakhstan at 4:11 a.m. Moscow time.
Search-and-rescue helicopters caught sight of the space capsule as it neared the ground, and the space officials at mission control applauded when the landing was reported. The bell-shaped descent module landed upright and the astronauts were carried out.
"We are tired. We got up very early, almost a day ago, just had a brief nap," Foale said as he sat outside the capsule, waiting to be carried to a medical tent for an initial checkup.
He told NASA officials at the landing site that he had enjoyed his first sniff of earth and air after six months in space, Associated Press reports.
It was the third time an American astronaut had come back to Earth aboard a Russian craft since the U.S. manned space program grounded its shuttle fleet following the Columbia disaster in February, 2003.
The landing of the space station's previous American-Russian crew in October went without a hitch — unlike the dramatic landing of the first American astronaut in a Russian Soyuz capsule in May 2003, when a computer error sent the crew on a wild descent 250 miles off-course.
Friday's landing was perfect.
"The landing was fantastic," Association Press quotes Kuipers, who had traveled to the station under a commercial agreement between the European and Russian space agencies.
At mission control, his two daughters and girlfriend Helen Conijn watched a video link with the landing site, where medics in lab coast bustled about the astronauts. Noting Kuipers' elation, she said, "It seems he never stops smiling."
Russian space officials said Wednesday that the Soyuz spacecraft, which had been in space for six months, was leaking helium. But both Russian and American space officials said the leak was very minor and would not affect the landing.
Helium is used to pressurize the Soyuz craft's fuel tanks for its descent. NASA spokesman Rob Navias said the leak was discovered after the craft's October launch but said there was "plenty of helium" onboard to allow normal landing.
With less than an hour to go before the scheduled landing, the Soyuz fired its engines to slow its descent and put it into the right trajectory for reaching its planned destination on Earth. Space officials at mission control said the operation went smoothly, proving that the helium leak posed no threat, Associated Press reports.
|
|
|
