collectSPACE: Messages - Edit this post

Space News
space history and artifacts articles

Messages
space history discussion forums

Sightings
worldwide astronaut appearances

Resources
selected space history documents

Forum: Soviet - Russian Space
Topic: Soyuz TMA-15 mission to the space station

Only forum leaders (Administrator, Editor) or the person that posted this message may edit this message (and only registered users may edit/delete posts) Note: Only forum leaders may delete posts.
Delete? To delete this post, check this box.
Your UserName:
Your Password:	Forget your password?
Message to Edit: HTML is ON UBB Code is ON Smilies Legend	Originally posted by Robert Pearlman on 12-01-2009 01:19 AM <BLOCKQUOTE>[b]Soyuz TMA-15 lands safely[/b] <div align="justify">Soyuz TMA-15, crewed by commander and Roscosmos cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Frank De Winne and Canadian Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Bob Thirsk, landed safely on the steppes of Kazakhstan at 1:15:34 a.m. CST on Tuesday, concluding 188 days in space. Due to wintry conditions at the landing site, the Soyuz ground support team's helicopters that would usually be employed to recover the crew were grounded. Instead, the team was dispatched in all-terrain vehicles from the nearby town of Arkalyk to extract the crew members from the spacecraft. The three cosmonauts will make the 50-mile journey back to Arkalyk by land. <center><img src="http://www.collectspace.com/review/tma15_landing01.jpg" WIDTH="400" HEIGHT="300"> <font size="-2">Credit: NASA TV</font></center> Romanenko, De Winne and Thirsk arrived aboard Soyuz TMA-15 at the International Space Station (ISS) in May as part of Expedition 20, which marked the start of six-person crew operations on the outpost. With their arrival, all five of the international partner agencies -- NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) -- were represented on orbit for the first time. Romanenko served as flight engineer for Expeditions 20 and 21. The son of veteran cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko, he became a cosmonaut himself in November 1999. De Winne served as a flight engineer for Expedition 20 and the first European ISS commander during Expedition 21. He previously spent nine days aboard the station in 2002 as a member of ESA's Odissea mission arriving on a new spacecraft, the Soyuz TMA-1, then leaving on the older Soyuz TM-34. Thirsk served as Canada's first long duration station crew member as a flight engineer for Expeditions 20 and 21. In 1996, he flew as a payload specialist aboard STS-78. The three are scheduled to fly back to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, outside Moscow, early Tuesday for reunions with their families and for the start of their reorientation to a gravity environment after spending half a year off the planet. Commander Jeff Williams and flight engineer Maxim Suraev remain on the station, comprising the Expedition 22 crew as a two-man contingent for three weeks until the arrival on Dec. 23 of Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, NASA's TJ Creamer, and Soichi Noguchi with JAXA aboard Soyuz TMA-17.</div></BLOCKQUOTE> <center><object width="400" height="321"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/okK7VEAke8k&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/okK7VEAke8k&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="321"></embed></object> <font size="-2">Credit: NASA TV</font></center>
	Disable Smilies in This Post.
*If HTML and/or UBB Code are enabled, this means you can use HTML and/or UBB Code in your message.

Contact Us | The Source for Space History & Artifacts