Russian cosmonaut Max Suraev and U.S. astronaut Jeffrey Williams are back on planet Earth today after landing safely about 60 kilometers north of the remote town of Arkalyk in north-central Kazakhstan.Their Soyuz spacecraft touched down at 7:24 a.m. EDT in three to four feet of snow and was blown on its side by winds gusting between 17 mph and 20 mph. It's no unusual for the capsule-like craft to tip over after landing. The capsule was dragged by its parachute about 20 to 30 feet from its initial touchdown point by the high winds.
With temperatures of about 20 degrees Fahrenheit and a wind chill factor of about zero degrees Fahrenheit, recovery forces quickly extracted the crew quickly and the two now are being attended to in an inflatable medical tent. Reporting via satellite telephone, NASA Public Affairs Officer said Suraev and Williams both appeared to be in excellent shape and both flashed thumbs up on their way to the tent.
An all-terrain vehicle with NASA TV camera equipment got bogged down en route to the snow-covered landing site, so no images were immediately available.
Suraev and Williams will be flown later today to a nearby town for a post-landing ceremony and then on to Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center outside Moscow. The landing came 169 days after their Sept. 30 launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan.
3 comments:
I love our space history. I have lived in on the Space Coast for 20 years. Worked on the Cape. I hate to see Obama rip apart NASA and sell to the highest bidder. But this just kills me!! Russians pull off a great landing and recovery in 20 MPH winds and 3-4 feet of snow. Set up a recovery scene including medical. And NASA can't even make it to the party with a camera!! This deserves a lot of attention from people that can correct this.
Good lord. Here in the states we need picture pefect sub-tropical weather. The Russians are making us look like fools!!
Obama's not "ripping apart" NASA... isn't he just following the "less government" policy? Of course, everyone at NASA has known since 2004 that the Shuttle was ending. And they also knew that the Endeavor projects were underfunded by the GOP budgets.
Since our country has been skirting a Depression, and millions of Americans are without health care insurance while taxpayers are footing the bill for the lowest income while the middle class is over paying for health care insurance, getting private industry involved makes cents.
Then again, if we hadn't trusted Bush before he invaded Iraq for the oil companies' contracts, we'd have plenty of money to fund NASA.
Yup, unemploy more people and call it a good thing. More people on unemplyment and welfare. And more of us paying taxes to support them. Cancelled Constellation prgram. Depending on China and Russia to give us a ride to the space platform we orchestrated.
I'm glad Bush kicked Iraq out of Kuwait. Not only are we dependent on the oil they produce but we are friends with them. We should have left Iraq a long time ago, given. But we needed to protect our allies.
Given the idea that we could use commercial means to get into space, great. But we need to be at that point BEFORE we kill NASA.
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