Three-man capsule returns from space station
A Russian space capsule carrying an Italian, a Russian and an American hurtled safely home to Earth from the International Space Station today, landing softly on the marshy Central Asian steppes in the early-morning darkness.
Search-and-rescue helicopters spotted the capsule floating under a parachute toward its designated arrival site about 56 miles north of the Kazakh town of Arkalyk. The TMA-5 capsule then landed upright in the slush less than three-and-a-half hours after undocking from the orbiting space station, where a new crew stayed behind to prepare to welcome the first space shuttle flight after a two-year hiatus.
Russia’s space program has been the only way of getting astronauts to the station since the Columbia disintegrated as it returned to Earth on February 1, 2003, sparking a suspension of shuttle flights. Nasa is hoping to renew shuttle flights next month.
“Again our Russian colleagues have shown how flexible they can be in the face of such daunting weather conditions in the landing zone to safely recover the crew,” William Readdy, Nasa’s associate administrator for space operations, told reporters at Russian Mission Control in Korolyov, outside Moscow.
“Step by step … we’ll continue our steps as partners to complete the international space station and then move on beyond the Earth’s orbit,” he said.
Italian Roberto Vittori, Russian Salizhan Sharipov and American Leroy Chiao climbed out of the capsule and were taken to a mobile hospital for a quick check-up; more thorough examinations were to be conducted after they arrived later today at Star City, the cosmonaut training centre outside Moscow.
Vittori, a European Space Agency astronaut, spent eight days on the station, while Sharipov and Chiao had been on the orbiting lab since October. Mission Control said Sharipov reported the crew felt fine.
Remaining behind on the station were Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and American astronaut John Phillips, whose six-month mission is planned to include welcoming the first US space shuttle flight since the Columbia disaster two years ago.
Engineers followed the capsule’s journey through space on a map projected on a large screen at Mission Control and periodically communicated with the crew as it sped toward Earth.
The TMA-5 undocked at 10.44pm Moscow time (7.44 Irish time), after a four-minute delay caused by problems with the hermetic seals on Vittori’s spacesuit, Mission Control officials said. The capsule entered the atmosphere about three hours later, and its parachute opened 15 minutes before the scheduled landing time of 2.07am Moscow time (22.07 Irish time).
Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said that even after the shuttle resumed flying, Russian Soyuz spacecraft will continue to travel to and from the station about twice a year because they will serve as escape vehicles.
