Expedition 15 Comes Home

Expedition 15 Returns Home , NASA

“After bidding farewell to the Expedition 16 crew Saturday night, the Expedition 15 crew, Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov, boarded their Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft for the return to Earth. They undocked from the station around 3:14 a.m. EDT Sunday and landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan at 6:36 a.m.”

NASA ISS On-Orbit Status 10/21/07

“Instead of flying on the closed-loop-guided trajectory designed to reduce peak deceleration & heating while extending the downrange, the ballistic mode results in a steeper trajectory, ~2g’s higher deceleration forces on the crew (7g max instead of 5g), and an undershoot of around ~250 mi. The crew was never in any increased danger, and the SAR (Search & Rescue) personnel did not require any additional time to reach the capsule, which they reportedly had in sight during parachute descent from ~4600m altitude down.]”