Back on Terra Firma - Russia Soyuz Spaceship Makes Successful Landing in the Kazakh Steppe
The Soyuz spaceship landed in the Kazakh Steppe. The participants of the long-term 54th expedition to the ISS were on board. These are cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Joseph Acaba. Yevgeny Nipod is speaking live to us from the flight control center in Korolev.
-Yevgeny, hello! Did the landing go as planned? How is the crew feeling?
-Hello, colleagues! The crew is feeling well. Everything went as planned, as you said. The spaceship landed in Kazakhstan, in the Karaganda Oblast. The cosmonauts haven't been on Earth for over 168 days. Before landing, during the descent the crew experienced the maximum 4G-force. As specialists say, for the cosmonaut, it feels like the pressure of several hundredweights. The parachute opened at a height of 10 kilometers. Before that, at 2:08 a.m. they undocked from the ISS. It's an exceptionally important moment. And at that moment, both the cosmonauts and the flight control center staff were fully concentrated. That's how it happened.
Attention, the undocking control sensors are on. We're performing the undocking.
-I'll remind you that it was during this mission to the ISS that a new record for Russia in extravehicular activity duration was set. Alexander Misurkin and Anton Shkaplerov spent 8 hours and 13 minutes outside of the ISS, repairing equipment, renewing the previous maximum time by 6 minutes. Meanwhile, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, along with an American and a Japanese astronaut remained at the ISS. Colleagues?
-Thank you! Our correspondent, working in the flight control center, reporting about the Soyuz spaceship landing.