ISS-6 Crew Returns To Earth

Home, where my thought's escaping
Home, where my music's playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me
Silently for me
Silently for me
--Simon and Garfunkle, "Homeward Bound"

For Americans Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pruitt, and Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, it was a bittersweet homecoming. Just three months ago, their friends aboard STS-107 were the last to re-enter Earth's atmosphere aboard the American space shuttle Columbia. The shuttle disintegrated, their seven friends killed.

Because of the Columbia disaster and the grounding of the American shuttle fleet, the Crew Six stayed aboard the International Space Station more than a month longer than had been planned. Their replacements, Edward Lu and Yuri Malenchenko, won't be joined by a third crew member on this mission; the better to save on supplies.

The Jitters?

The early Saturday return of the Soyuz TMA-2 space capsule marked not on the first time humans had re-entered the atmosphere from space, but the first time that particular vehicle made a manned re-entry from orbit. Unlike American space capsules in the days of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, the Soyuz spacecraft lands on solid ground - once acerbically described by an American astronaut who made the ride as "rather bumpy."

Just in case, NASA medical teams at the landing site in Kazakhstan were on full alert, ready to aid injured astronauts with the most advanced treatment they could carry. "The eyes of the American public and Congress and everyone are going to be on this landing," said Dr. J.D. Polk, one of two NASA flight surgeons who headed to the landing site with two helicopter loads of medical supplies, along with U.S. Air Force medical personnel - just in case.

But all that appeared for naught as the Soyuz capsule landed safely, about 55 miles north of the remote Kazakh town of Arkalyk. Reuters quoted a Russian space official, speaking on loudspeaker at the Baikonur Cosmodrone, as saying, "They have landed. The helicopter is in the landing area. At the moment (the rescuers) are searching." More to follow.

FMI: www.spaceflight.nasa.gov/station