Mon, Nov 29, 2010
Soyuz Landing Caps Space Station's First Decade of
Expeditions
In a world that once breathlessly
followed every inch of our progress into space, an amazing
milestone came and went, barely noticed, during the Thanksgiving
holidays. Expedition 25 Commander Doug Wheelock and Flight
Engineers Shannon Walker and Fyodor Yurchikhin safely landed their
Soyuz spacecraft on the Kazakhstan steppe Thursday, wrapping up a
five-month stay aboard the International Space Station. Russian
cosmonaut Yurchikhin, the Soyuz commander, was at the controls of
the spacecraft as it undocked at 8:23 p.m. EST from the station's
Rassvet module. The trio landed at 2346 (1046 on Nov. 26 local
time) at a site northeast of the town of Arkalyk.
Working in frigid temperatures, Russian recovery teams were on
hand to help the crew exit the Soyuz vehicle and re-adjust to
gravity. Yurchikhin will return to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training
Center in Star City, outside of Moscow, while Wheelock and Walker
will fly directly home to Houston.
The trio launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 15. As members of the
Expedition 24 and 25 crews, they spent 163 days in space, 161 of
them aboard the station, and celebrated the 10th anniversary of
continuous human life, work and research by international crews
aboard the station on Nov. 2.
During their mission, the Expedition 24 and 25 crew members
worked on more than 120 microgravity experiments in human research;
biology and biotechnology; physical and materials sciences;
technology development; and Earth and space sciences. The
astronauts also responded to an emergency shutdown of half of the
station's external cooling system and supported three unplanned
spacewalks by Wheelock and Expedition 24 Flight Engineer Tracy
Caldwell Dyson to replace the faulty pump module that caused the
shutdown. Their efforts restored the station's critical cooling
system to full function.
Yurchikhin has logged 371 total days in space, Wheelock 178 days
and Walker 163 days. The station is occupied by Expedition 26
Commander Scott Kelly and Flight Engineers Alexander Kaleri and
Oleg Skripochka of the Russian Federal Space Agency. A new trio of
Expedition 26 flight engineers, NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman,
Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev and Paolo Nespoli of the
European Space Agency, will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on
Dec. 15. They will dock with the station and join its crew on Dec.
17.
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