U.S.-Russian space trio lands safely despite bad weather

Reuters    Translate This Article
11 March 2014

ALMATY (Reuters) - An American astronaut and two Russians who carried a Sochi Olympic torch into open space landed safely and on time on Tuesday in Kazakhstan, defying bad weather and ending their 166-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

'We have a landing!' read a huge TV screen at Russia's Mission Control outside Moscow as the descent capsule hit the frozen ground at 0924 (0324 GMT) southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan.

'Safe arrival back on Earth,' said a NASA TV announcer while all-terrain rescue and recovery vehicles were shown trundling across a snowy steppe to the Soyuz TMA-10M capsule. 'The crew are reported to be in good health,' NASA said.

Inside the capsule were former ISS commander Oleg Kotov and flight engineers Sergei Ryazansky and Michael Hopkins from NASA. The trio launched together into space on Sept. 25.

Shortly afterwards, the space travelers were seated in semi-reclined chairs in the deep snow and covered with blue blankets to protect them from strong gusts of wind.

Kotov, the most experienced astronaut in his crew, was shown waving his left hand with a palm black from the soot of the descent capsule, which was charred on re-entry.

Rookie Hopkins smiled as a doctor checked his pulse.

In addition to working on 35 science experiments, Kotov and Ryazansky carried the unlit Olympic torch for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games outside the station during a spacewalk on Nov. 9.

They left behind a small crew headed by Japan's Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese national to command the station. Three more crew members are due to arrive later this month.

Severe weather in Kazakhstan had threatened to delay the Soyuz's landing.

Before their undocking from the ISS, fog and low visibility had prevented airborne rescue and recovery teams from getting to Zhezkazgan, a town about 90 miles (150 km) from the remote landing site on the windswept flatlands, a Russian space industry source said.

But Russian officials decided to go ahead with the landing after reviewing weather forecasts and the status of recovery crews.

'There's a lot of snow on the ground and temperatures are hovering in the single-digits (Fahrenheit),' said NASA mission commentator Dan Huot.

Due to severe weather conditions, it was decided not to set up an inflatable tent for routine medical tests at the landing site. Instead, the crew underwent just quick tests before being flown by helicopters straight to the local Kazakh town of Karaganda, where a formal welcome ceremony would be held.

The U.S.-Russian space partnership so far has not been affected by tensions over Ukraine. The countries lead the 15-nation space station programme.

The $100 billion research complex, which flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth, has been permanently staffed by rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts since November 2000.

(Reporting by Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Irene Klotz in Cape Canaveral, and Dmitry Solovyov in Almaty; Editing by Steve Gutterman, Eric Walsh and Ken Wills)

© Copyright 2014 Reuters

Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. 'Reuters' and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies. For additional information on other Reuters media services please visit reuters.com/newsagency.

Every day Global Good News documents the rise of a better quality of life dawning in the world from good news reported by the press; and highlights the need for introducing Natural Law based-Total Knowledge based-programmes to bring the support of Nature to every individual, raise the quality of life of every society, and create a lasting state of world peace.



Translation software is not perfect; however if you would like to try it, you can translate this page using:

(Google) Select a language English to Afrikaans English to Albanian English to Arabic English to Belarusian English to Bulgarian English to Catalan English to Chinese (Simplified) English to Chinese (Traditional) English to Croatian English to Czech English to Danish English to Dutch English to Estonian English to Filipino English to Finnish English to French English to Galician English to German English to Greek English to Hebrew English to Hindi English to Hungarian English to Icelandic English to Indonesian English to Irish English to Italian English to Japanese English to Korean English to Latvian English to Lithuanian English to Macedonian English to Malay English to Maltese English to Norwegian English to Persian English to Polish English to Portuguese English to Romanian English to Russian English to Serbian English to Slovak English to Slovenian English to Spanish English to Swahili English to Swedish English to Thai English to Turkish English to Ukrainian English to Vietnamese English to Welsh English to Yiddish

(Altavista babelfish) Select a languageEnglish to Chinese-simpEnglish to Chinese-tradEnglish to DutchEnglish to PortugueseEnglish to FrenchEnglish to GermanEnglish to GreekEnglish to ItalianEnglish to JapaneseEnglish to KoreanEnglish to RussianEnglish to Spanish

Send Good News to Global Good News.

Your comments.