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European Space Agency

Press Release

A Hard But Safe Landing

12 May 2003
 
ESA INFO 09-2003. The crew of Expedition 6 to the International Space
Station, US astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russian
cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, returned to Earth on 4 May after spending
162 days on board. 
 
Expedition 6 left the ISS in the TMA-1 spacecraft that had flown ESA
astronaut Frank De Winne to the Station on 1 November 2002. Initially
the Expedition 6 crew was to have been relieved in March by a new
crew arriving on Space Shuttle flight STS 114. 

After the Columbia accident, ESA agreed to a six-month postponement
of Pedro Duque's mission to the Station, initially scheduled for
April, making the Soyuz flight available for relieving the Expedition
6 crew. The Expedition 7 crew, US astronaut Ed Lu and Russian
cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, arrived at the Station on a TMA-2
spacecraft on 28 April.

The Soyuz capsule's re-entry did not take place in the nominal
automatic controlled mode, in which the trajectory of the capsule is
actively controlled by using aerodynamic lifting forces when rolling
the capsule to the left or right. This mode provides minimum gravity
loads to the astronauts during re-entry and accurate landing, which
in the case of Expedition 6 should have occurred 88 km north of
Arkalyk. 

For as yet unknown reasons the re-entry took place in ballistic mode,
in which the capsule behaves like a spherical object. For greater
stability the capsule spins around its trajectory axis. The ballistic
mode leads to a steeper trajectory, increased gravity loads for
astronauts, and less precision in reaching the landing site. It is a
contingency mode, which had occurred twice before in the history of
Soyuz capsule re-entries.

The Expedition 6 crew experienced about 8 times the force of gravity
during re-entry and the landing took place at 04:07 Central European
Time, 150 km north of Baikonur, about 440 km short of the planned
target landing area. 

The recovery teams therefore had to be redirected and it took them
longer than usual to locate and retrieve the capsule. The crew had
established radio communications with the recovery teams and the
Mission Control Centre near Moscow. After the arrival of the recovery
teams, the crew were flown by helicopter to Baikonur, from where they
returned to the Chalkovsky military airfield near the Gagarin
Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, north of Moscow. Nikolai
Budarin, Kenneth Bowersox, and Donald Pettit were in good physical
shape. At the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre they have started
debriefings and physical rehabilitation, which will last about 16
days.

This was the first re-entry by the enhanced TMA-1. It was also the
first time that US astronauts had returned from space in a Soyuz
spacecraft. The Expedition 7 crew flew TMA-2, the second enhanced
Soyuz spacecraft, to the ISS, where it will stay until
October/November 2003. It will then be used to bring the Expedition 7
crew and the European astronaut Pedro Duque back to Earth.

Rosaviakosmos Director General Yuri Koptev has set up a State
Commission under Nikolai Moiseev, Deputy Director General of
Rosaviakosmos, to investigate why the Soyuz re-entry occurred in
ballistic mode.

For further information, please contact:

ESA Media relations Service
Tel: +33(0)1.53.69.7155
Fax: +33(0)1.53.69.7690

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