Japan's first space station commander and crewmates land safely

Returning to Earth were space station commander Koichi Wakata, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin.

Japan's first space station commander and crewmates land safely

World Bulletin/News Desk

The first Japanese to command a space mission and crewmates from the United States and Russia landed safely in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, wrapping up a 188-day stay aboard the International Space Station.

"We have confirmation of landing," a NASA television presenter said during a live broadcast as the capsule with the space trio touched down in a Kazakh steppe 148 km (93 miles) southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan at 07:58 a.m. (0158 GMT).

"The crew are well and in good health."

Search and recovery forces soon converged on the capsule, which was charred by extreme heat on re-entry, and opened the hatch, extracting the crew.


A smiling Tyurin was the first to experience Earth gravity after six months in orbit, taken from the capsule and carried to a semi-reclined chair, while a doctor checked his pulse and blood pressure.

"The heart rate is 100 (per minute)," a presenter for Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

Tyurin, whose crew had symbolically carried a torch of Russia's Sochi Winter Olympics to orbit, was then shown making a call via a satellite telephone. "The landing was wonderful. Everything was just perfect," he said.

"Misha, what would you like to have right now?" a Roscosmos worker asked Tyurin. "Some red wine, please," Tyurin replied.

An upbeat Wakata, a space veteran with four missions and a total of more than 300 days spent in space, joined Tyurin shortly, seated nearby on a warm and sunny day.

Finally, Mastracchio was extracted from the spacecraft, and the trio were then carried to an orange inflatable tent set up nearby to undergo medical checks before their flight to Star City outside Moscow.


The returning space trio climbed inside their Russian Soyuz capsule and departed the orbital outpost at 6:36 p.m. EDT/2236 GMT as it flew 260 miles (418 km) over Mongolia.

"What an exciting time we shared in this increment," Wakata said during a change-of-command ceremony broadcast on NASA Television. NASA astronaut Steven Swanson takes control of the station.

Swanson and cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev will manage the station, a $100-billion project of 15 nations, on their own, until new crewmates arrive on May 28.

Until Tuesday, the station partnership, headed by the United States and Russia, had been relatively untouched by the rhetoric and economic sanctions stemming from Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula.

But the programme's protected status shifted after Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's deputy prime minister for space and defense, told news agencies on Tuesday that he would not support a U.S. and European proposal to extend the space station beyond 2020.


Apparently exempt from Rogozin's ban are Soyuz flight services, now the only means of taking crew to the space station following the retirement of U.S. space shuttles in 2011. NASA pays Russia more than $60 million per person to fly its astronauts on Soyuz capsules and is expected to continue to do so until at least 2017.

NASA said it had not yet received any official notification from Russia on changes in space cooperation.


"Ongoing operations on the ISS continue on a normal basis."

NASA, which aims to break the Russian monopoly on crew flight services by 2017, is reviewing proposals from at least three U.S. firms to develop a commercial space taxi.

Güncelleme Tarihi: 14 Mayıs 2014, 09:52