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2003
Report #21 
12:30 a.m. CDT, Sunday May 4, 2003 
Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas 
 

The Expedition 6 crew touched down in northern Kazakhstan in its
Soyuz spacecraft at 9:07 p.m. CDT Saturday, after an undocking from
the International Space Station. The Soyuz landed well short of the
predicted site and it took almost three hours for a search plane to
find the capsule and report that all appeared well. 

The Soyuz landed about 275 miles west and a little south of its
predicted touchdown point.

The aircraft found the capsule and established radio contact with the
crew at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday. The plane's crew subsequently
reported seeing Expedition 6 crewmembers outside the Soyuz, waving
and apparently well. 

The crew, Commander Ken Bowersox, Soyuz Commander Nikolai Budarin and
NASA ISS Science Officer Don Pettit, spent about 5½ months in space,
all but two days of it on the station. The landing ended a mission
that began with their launch on Nov. 23 and their docking to the
orbiting laboratory two days later. It marked the first landing of an
advanced Soyuz TMA spacecraft, and it was the first time U.S.
astronauts have landed in any Soyuz capsule.

Expedition 7 Commander Yuri Malenchenko and NASA ISS Science Officer
Ed Lu, who arrived at the station early last Monday, formally began
their increment on the station with the departure of their
predecessors.  A change-of-command ceremony began at 1:15 p.m.
Saturday. After farewells, hatches between the station and the Soyuz
TMA-1 were closed at 2:38 p.m.  Malenchenko and Lu will be aboard the
orbiting laboratory for about six months. 

The undocking procedure began right on time at 5:40 p.m. Saturday,
with springs pushing the Soyuz away from the ISS three minutes later.
At  5:46 p.m. a separation burn of Soyuz thrusters increased its
speed as it moved away.  Minutes later, the station began maneuvering
itself from the undocking attitude back to the standard "duty
attitude."

The 4-minute, 18-second deorbit burn began at 8:12 p.m. About 8:40 p.
m. the orbital and instrumentation/propulsion modules separated from
the crew's descent module, the only one of the three intended to
return to Earth. Minutes later that module began to feel the effects
of the upper atmosphere. About 8:52 p.m. the first of a series of
parachutes deployed to slow the module's rate of descent and six
small rocket engines fired just before touchdown to further slow the
capsule. 

Helicopters with ground support personnel had to refuel before flying
to the Soyuz to retrieve the crew.  The crew will fly today to the
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan before returning to Star City, the
Russian space center near Moscow. There the crew will begin
debriefings and physical rehabilitation.  Bowersox and Pettit are
scheduled to return to Johnson Space Center in a little over two
weeks.

Information on the crew's activities aboard the space station, future
launch dates, as well as station sighting opportunities from anywhere
on the Earth, is available on the Internet at: 

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/

Details on station science operations can be found on an Internet
site administered by the Payload Operations Center at NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., at: 

http://scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov/

The next International Space Station status report will be issued on
Friday, May 9, or sooner if events warrant. 

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