Watch three space station astronauts make a bulls-eye landing in the Kazakhstan desert

[Sunlei]

Source: Washington Post

Three astronauts descended 250 miles to touch down in the desert near the city of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Monday. Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko, both Russian cosmonauts, and NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough made a clean landing in their Russian spacecraft, the Soyuz MS-02. Thanks to the accuracy of the descent — the craft landed just as planned — cameras were able to film the incoming capsule.

“It was a textbook touchdown,” Rob Navias, a NASA spokesman said in TV commentary after the landing, as Space.com reported. “The Soyuz was pulled by its main parachute onto its side, but the crew was quickly extracted and are in good shape.”

The landing's precise nature was a testament to how far we've come since the early days of spaceflight. The second American in space, Gus Grissom, almost drowned in the Atlantic in 1961 when his capsule, “Liberty Bell 7,” plopped into the ocean and began to flood with seawater. (He maintained that there was a malfunction, contrary to insinuations that he panicked and triggered the escape hatch too early.) “Liberty Bell 7" sank, exiled to the ocean floor until a salvage boat recovered it in 1999.

With the Soyuz MS-02's return came the end of the International Space Station's Expedition 50. Kimbrough and his crewmates had logged 173 days, just under half a year, in space on this mission.


Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/04/10/watch-three-space-station-astronauts-make-a-bulls-eye-landing-in-the-kazakhstan-desert/?utm_term=.e3f32ed92703

[Warpy]

1. I seem to remember that the one time the Russians landed in water

early in their space program, it was a near catastrophe. Opening the capsule would have drowned them and keeping it closed would have suffocated them. Weather and impending darkness delayed the rescue and the chopper that located them expected to find the Cosmonauts dead. They survived, barely. Since then, the landings have all been very comfortably in the middle of a desert somewhere, no water in sight.

The early days of space flight were fraught with danger in the US, also, from Grissom's near drowning to the deaths of 3 astronauts in a capsule fire. Everything was jerrybuilt because nobody had done it before.

However, nobody managed to top the Soviets and a lot of this stuff has just been coming out in the past few years. Cracked has a good article on it: http://www.cracked.com/article_19142_5-soviet-space-programs-that-prove-russia-was-insane.html

[SeattleVet]

6. That was Soyuz 23 in 1976.

They landed (and sank) in a partially frozen lake after an aborted mission. The capsule had been pulled underwater by the parachutes; their main shortage was battery power, so everything was shut down. Rescue was delayed until the next day - there was a blizzard. In addition, the capsule and crew were too heavy for the recovery helicopter, which had to tow them to shore. The crew barely survived; there was frost inside when they they opened the capsule.

Full story of the mission and recovery is pretty interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_23

All Soyuz are supposed to be able to be capable of land or water landings and recovery.

(All spaceflight is fraught with danger; there are many actions taken to minimize it, but it's something that is inherently dangerous, and, at times, deadly.)

[Warpy]

8. Thanks! I disremembered it sort of correctly

They're much better at it these days. So are we at what we do.

Sailors of old avoided learning how to swim. They knew if something catastrophic happened, the end would be quick, rather than having to thrash around for hours until they died of exhaustion, exposure, or sharks. There is no way to swim through near vacuum, so any end out there would likely be fairly quick.

[DURHAM D]

2. I would guess that about 98% of US citizens do not know

that access to the space station is through Mother Russia.

[George II]

4. Not if you're a fan of the Big Bang Theory and Howard Wolowitz!

[Warpy]

5. Well, I think we'll be sending them up

as SpaceX gets better and better. Getting them home again is up to the Russians.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. For a lot of taxpayer dollars too!

[Princess Turandot]

3. Here the video itself....

The parachute first appears at about 5:00.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Beautiful! Thank you for sharing this. n/t

[Crash2Parties]

7. Welcome home, astronauts & cosmonauts!

More info on how they land the Soyuz capsules, if you are curious:

http://spaceflight101.com/soyuz-ms-01/soyuz-ms-01-undocking/

[Rhiannon12866]

10. Oh, thank you!

I'm very interested!

[Hortensis]

11. I love being reminded that human advances continue,

political forces merely factors of reality to be used and ignored as can be.

[Sunlei]

12. Love Science and astronauts! and the mars rover that STILL WORKS even with a cracked tread :P