Expedition 31 Lands
ISS Expedition 31 Crew Lands Safely, NASA (With landing video.)
“Three members of the Expedition 31 crew undocked from the International Space Station and returned safely to Earth Sunday, July 1, wrapping up a mission that lasted six-and-a-half months.”
“Russian Commander Oleg Kononenko, NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers landed their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft in Kazakhstan at 3:14 a.m. CDT (2:14 p.m. local time) after undocking from the space station’s Rassvet module at 11:47 p.m. June 30. The trio, which arrived at the station Dec. 23, 2011, spent a total of 193 days in space, 191 of which were aboard the station.”
I watched the live coverage this morning but there was something that I didn’t notice until later when I watched the replay on the link provided. At 0:20 seconds into the video, which was eleven minutes before landing, you can see something dropping from the capsule just before it disappears behind a cloud. Apparently Rob Navias didn’t notice it either because he continued on with his commentary without mentioning it.
Steve:
That was the Soyuz heat shield which they drop off to expose the landing rockets used in the last second of flight. I almost missed it too but I was waiting for it.
tinker
So how come Navias blamed the grass fire just upwind of the Soyuz resting place on the hot ‘heat shield’? You can see the first truck-borne team scrambling with fire extinguishers and shovels to put it out before the flames blew into the Soyuz itself.
Saw that too. I assumed that was just a fire started by the landing rockets firing.
The wind was blowing the flames towards the Soyuz, but a vehicle designed to survive entry heating isn’t going to be bothered by a brief surge of a prairie fire, although it might have upset the plans of the recovery teams. But wouldn’t the air intakes be open at this point, allowing some smoke to enter? There were oxygen masks so even that wouldn’t have been serious. Worse grass fires have been sparked by landings, like Whitson’s — even though NASA PAO still insisted that one was a coincidental stubble-clearing fire set by locals. And now, this one was supposedly set by a red-hot ‘heat shield’ that actually had been jettisoned eleven minutes earlier? Somebody needs to check, verify, and reeducate some spox.
I watched the landing live as well. Seemed like the coverage ignored Don Pettit. Since he was the last one out (unexpected) I was just hoping he was ok.
I thought the same thing but it could be that he was still feeling woozy and needed a little more time. I remember Tracy Caldwell Dyson telling about her experience. Her capsule also landed upright, and she said that after the hatch was opened there was someone looking down at her and telling her to climb up the ladder. She remembers thinking “I can’t even lift my arm and they expect me to stand up and climb a ladder?” However eventually with some effort she was able to. Once at the top of the ladder they pull them up and out.
Some cases are even worse like when Paolo Nespoli landed after Expedition 27 it took a long time to get him out and from what I remember they took him straight to the medical tent. It is speculated that his condition is what caused him to accidentally leave behind in the capsule the SD cards containing his photos of Endeavour docked to ISS. The result being that we had to wait a couple of weeks for the capsule to go through normal processing before we could see the photos.
If you listen carefully in the coverage you can hear “Barf Bag”. Also you can see very quickly when they are carrying Don into the medical tent that he has what looks like a towel or cloth on one side of his open helmet. Coming back to gravity can be rough….
It’s also rough on the way up. Don had a very revealing post on his blog on this topic, “Forced Smile”:
http://blogs.airspacemag.co…