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Space station astronauts land off-target; but safely
Topic Started: Apr 20 2008, 09:33 AM (81 Views)
George K
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Finally
I missed!

The International Space Station's (ISS) first female commander and two crewmates are safely back on Earth, but landed well short of their intended landing site as they capped a marathon mission to the orbiting laboratory.

The Russian Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft ferrying Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson, of NASA, and her crew to Earth touched down about 295 miles short of its target zone on the central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan.

"The crew is alive and well. The landing was nominal, but by a backup design," said Anatoly Perminov, chief of Russia's Federal Space Agency, after the 4:30 a.m. ET landing on Saturday. "It was a ballistic descent and all the cosmonauts are feeling fine."

A ballistic re-entry is one in which a Soyuz re-enters at a steeper than normal angle that subjects astronaut crews to higher forces of gravity, NASA officials said.

Cosmonauts returning from the space station last fall also experienced a ballistic re-entry, as did the crew of Expedition 6 in 2003.

Whitson returned home alongside Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, an Expedition 16 flight engineer, after a six-month mission that added new science and living space to the $100 billion station. South Korea's first astronaut, 29-year-old bioengineer So-yeon Yi, also accompanied the Expedition 16 crew to conclude her own 10-day spaceflight to the ISS.

Malenchenko, as Soyuz commander, used a satellite phone to contact recovery forces to relay that the crew was in good health.

"We went through the same thing on Expedition 6," said Steve Lindsey, NASA's chief astronaut who planned to greet Whitson at the original landing site. "Of course we didn't hear from them for awhile, so we were concerned. But eventually we got word that they were located so that's real good news."

Recovery teams located the Soyuz crew about 45 minutes after its scheduled landing with a complement of flight surgeons to begin traditional post-landing health checks, Lindsey added.

Posted Image
Smoke rises where the Soyuz capsule, carrying South Korea's first astronaut, Yi So-yeon, astronaut Peggy Whitson, cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko, landed in northern Kazakhstan. The capsule landed 295 miles off course, but safely.


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"The landing was nominal, but by a backup design"

Yeah, what? I meant to do that. :lol2:
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Luke's Dad
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Emperor Pengin
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The International Space Station's (ISS) first female commander and two crewmates are safely back on Earth


Women drivers... :rolleyes:
The problem with having an open mind is that people keep trying to put things in it.
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Copper
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Shortstop

That picture is worth a thousand words.

That is a picture of a nominal landing.

Our current high tech is really so primitive.
The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy
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