A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut back to Earth from the International Space Station landed safely in Kazakhstan on Saturday.
"The TMA module has landed," an announcer at Mission Control outside Moscow said to applause from officials and relatives, relieved after an initial attempt to return from the orbital outpost was foiled by an equipment problem on Friday.
Space officials said the capsule landed upright, on time and on target near Arkalyk on the central Kazakh steppe.
NASA TV showed technicians crouching over the hatch of the gumdrop-shaped capsule and helping Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov out in his spacesuit.
NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson was next out, smiling as she was carried to an armchair at the landing site and covered with a blue blanket.
As cosmonaut Mikhail Korniyenko was extracted from the hatch in the top of the cramped capsule, Dyson chatted on a satellite phone.
Skvortsov, Dyson and Korniyenko spent nearly six months aboard the International Space Station.
They were to have returned on Friday, but the descent was aborted after latches holding their Soyuz TMA-18 craft to the orbital station failed to open, sending puzzled engineers scrambling for answers.
"The TMA module has landed," an announcer at Mission Control outside Moscow said to applause from officials and relatives, relieved after an initial attempt to return from the orbital outpost was foiled by an equipment problem on Friday.
Space officials said the capsule landed upright, on time and on target near Arkalyk on the central Kazakh steppe.
NASA TV showed technicians crouching over the hatch of the gumdrop-shaped capsule and helping Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov out in his spacesuit.
NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson was next out, smiling as she was carried to an armchair at the landing site and covered with a blue blanket.
As cosmonaut Mikhail Korniyenko was extracted from the hatch in the top of the cramped capsule, Dyson chatted on a satellite phone.
Skvortsov, Dyson and Korniyenko spent nearly six months aboard the International Space Station.
They were to have returned on Friday, but the descent was aborted after latches holding their Soyuz TMA-18 craft to the orbital station failed to open, sending puzzled engineers scrambling for answers.
No comments:
Post a Comment