Soyuz spacecraft lands in Kazakhstan after 127 days in orbit

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Soyuz TMA-05M manned spacecraft touched down early on Monday, November 19 ending its three-and-a-half hour voyage to bring three International Space Station (ISS) crew members to Earth after 127 days in orbit, RIA Novosti reported.

The spacecraft carrying Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide undocked from ISS at 2:26 Monday and landed on schedule northeast of the town of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan at 5:53.

Three planes, 12 helicopters and six rescue vehicles were deployed to the area to ensure a quick search and recovery of the returning crew from the landing capsule.

The crew will soon be evacuated from the reentry capsule and after a health check in a mobile medical unit they will be flown by helicopter to an airfield in the Kazakh city of Karaganda and then to Moscow’s Chkalovsky airfield.

During their mission, members of the ISS crew participated in one Russian spacewalk (Malenchenko and Gennady Padalka), two U.S. spacewalks (Williams and Hoshide), works to undock Europe’s ATV-3 space freighter, docking and undocking of the Dragon spacecraft and docking of the Soyuz-TMA-06M spacecraft.

More than 40 scientific experiments were conducted at the station during Malenchenko, Williams and Hoshide’s stay in orbit.

The ISS team now lists Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin, as well as NASA astronaut Kevin Ford.

They will be joined by Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn, who are currently undergoing launch training near Moscow. They are scheduled to blast off onboard the Soyuz TMA-07M from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on December 19.