{"id":13438,"date":"2018-12-20T01:14:45","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T17:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/station-crew-set-for-overnight-landing-in-kazakhstan\/"},"modified":"2018-12-20T01:14:45","modified_gmt":"2018-12-19T17:14:45","slug":"station-crew-set-for-overnight-landing-in-kazakhstan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/station-crew-set-for-overnight-landing-in-kazakhstan\/","title":{"rendered":"Station crew set for overnight landing in Kazakhstan"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"\"
NASA astronaut Serena Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor, Expedition 57 commander Alexander Gerst, and Soyuz commander Sergey Prokopyev are set for landing in Kazakhstan Thursday. Credit: Roscosmos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eight days after a dramatic spacewalk to inspect the site of a leak in the hull of his Soyuz ferry ship, Russian commander Sergey Prokopyev, German flight engineer Alexander Gerst and NASA astronaut Serena Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor geared up to depart the International Space Station Wednesday for a fiery plunge back to Earth.<\/p>\n

The flight plan called for the crew to board the Soyuz MS-09\/55S spacecraft and seal the hatch around 5:20 p.m. EST, undocking from the space station\u2019s Earth-facing Rassvet module at 8:40 p.m.<\/p>\n

After moving a safe distance away, Prokopyev and Gerst plan to monitor a planned four-minute 37-second rocket firing starting at 11:10 p.m., slowing the ship by about 286 mph to lower the far side of the orbit into the atmosphere for a descent to the steppe of Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n

If all goes well, the spacecraft\u2019s central descent module, the section of the spacecraft carrying the crew, will make a parachute-and-rocket-assisted touchdown near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, around 12:03 a.m. Thursday (11:03 a.m. local time).<\/p>\n

With up to four inches of snow in the area, Russian recovery crews and medical personnel, along with U.S. and European Space Agency support teams, will be stationed nearby to help the returning crew members out of the cramped crew compartment as they begin their re-adaptation to gravity six months after launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on June 6.<\/p>\n

With touchdown, Prokopyev and Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor will have logged 196 days 17 hours and 51 minutes off the planet during their first space mission while Gerst, veteran of a 165-day stay aboard the station in 2014, will have nearly a full year of cumulative time aloft.<\/p>\n

Asked what she was looking forward to the most, Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor said \u201cthat\u2019s easy. Family. That\u2019s what you miss the most up here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think you ever really get used to it,\u201d she told CBS News in an interview last month. \u201cYou have reminders, we have pictures, we get special video conference calls, but it\u2019s not like being in the arms of your loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Second on her list behind family \u201cwould be just the feelings of Earth,\u201d she said. \u201cFor example, the wind, the rain. We were watching a video the other day and I remember being very jealous of watching somebody stand by the ocean because I knew they could feel the wind and smell the sea. And we can\u2019t do that up here.\u201d<\/p>\n

After brief medical checks and satellite phone calls home to friends and family, Prokopyev, Gerst and Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor will be flown by helicopter to Dzhezkazgan for an official welcome home ceremony. Prokopyev then will head back to Star City near Moscow while Gerst heads for Cologne, Germany. Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor will return to her home near the Johnson Space Center in Houston.<\/p>\n

Asked what she will miss the most about life aboard the station, Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor said \u201cit sounds kind of simple, but floating everywhere is pretty awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first when you get up here you\u2019re sort of this ungraceful ballerina who can\u2019t manage anything \u2026 but this is my favorite part,\u201d she said, turning a slow flip aboard the station. \u201cIt lets you work in three dimensions, and you just realize what your body\u2019s able to accomplish up here that you just don\u2019t do on Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is what I\u2019m going to miss the most. Of course, looking outside and seeing the Earth is absolutely beautiful. But watching the way the human body adapts to being up here is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Left behind in orbit with the departure of the Soyuz MS-09 crew will be Expedition 58 commander Oleg Kononenko, Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques and NASA astronaut Anne McClain. They originally expected to launch last week, joining cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and Nick Hague aboard the station.<\/p>\n

But Ovchinin and Hague were victims of a launch abort Oct. 11, the first for a Soyuz spacecraft since 1983. Instead of reaching the station and joining Gerst, Prokopyev and Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor, Ovchinin and Hague were forced to make an emergency landing near Dzhezkazgan, throwing a wrench into the carefully planned crew rotation schedule.<\/p>\n

Russian engineers quickly traced the problem to the system used to control the separation of the four liquid-fueled strap-on boosters making up the Soyuz FG booster\u2019s first stage. A fix was relatively straight forward.<\/p>\n

After assessing multiple options, Russian managers opted to move up launch of Kononenko\u2019s crew from Dec. 20 to Dec. 3 and to delay the departure of Gerst and his crewmates from Dec. 13 to Dec. 20.<\/p>\n

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, also moved up the next flight in the sequence. That mission, originally planned for early April, was to have carried Russian commander Oleg Skripochka, NASA astronaut Christina Koch and a United Arab Emirates guest astronaut to the station.<\/p>\n

Instead, Ovchinin and Hague will join Koch aboard the Soyuz MS-12\/58S spacecraft, launching to the station at the end of February.<\/p>\n

In an interview with CBS News at his home in Houston, Hague said he had full confidence in the Soyuz\u2019s safety systems and that he was looking forward to fulfilling his mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing up there on the space station every day, it\u2019s important,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to open humanity\u2019s eyes, discover new things, make life better on the ground and push farther into the universe. That\u2019s a really important thing to be doing, and it benefits so many people. So you accept the risk because you believe in what you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

His wife, Catie, agreed, but said she was still nervous about the idea of her husband riding a rocket into space.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very nervous (during the October launch), and I\u2019m still nervous,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s risk, there\u2019s a lot of risk with what they do, and to be on the outside of that looking in, where you have absolutely no control, is scary. It\u2019s scary.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I trust him,\u201d she said, \u201cI trust his training, I trust his commander Alexey implicitly, and I know everybody is really invested in their safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft that gave the Russians problems. The Soyuz MS-09 ferry ship that Prokopyev, Gerst and Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor are relying on for their trip home had trouble of its own last August when sensors aboard the station detected a slight drop in the lab\u2019s air pressure.<\/p>\n

The leak was not deemed serious enough to wake the crew, but the next morning the four astronauts and two cosmonauts making up the Expedition 56 crew traced the leak to the upper \u201corbital\u201d module of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft.<\/p>\n

Photographs of the hole that were downlinked by the station crew showed what appeared to be a drilled-out penetration in an interior panel with several nearby gouges like those that would be caused by a drill skipping across a surface before digging in.<\/p>\n

Dmitry Rogozin, the director of Roscosmos, raised eyebrows when he did not immediately rule out the station\u2019s crew members among possible suspects. He said \u201cit is a matter of honor for Energy Rocket and Space Corporation (Soyuz builder RSC Energia) to find the one responsible for that, to find out whether it was an accidental defect or a deliberate spoilage, and where it was done \u2013 either on Earth or in space.\u201d<\/p>\n

As one might expect, Drew Feustel, the commander of the station at the time, told interviewers his crew had nothing to do with the leak other than plugging it, and no one since then has suggested the possibility of any such involvement.<\/p>\n

In any case, Prokopyev and fellow cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, acting on instructions from the Russian mission control center, plugged the hole with gauze soaked in epoxy. The plug held, and flight controllers later boosted cabin air pressure back to normal levels.<\/p>\n

The crew was never in any danger, officials said, and a safe re-entry by the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft has never been in question because of the leak.<\/p>\n

In a normal entry, the three modules making up a Soyuz spacecraft \u2014 the upper orbital section the crew compartment and the lower propulsion module \u2014 separate from each other just before falling back into the discernible atmosphere.<\/p>\n

The upper and lower modules burn up while the descent module, the only one protected by a heat shield, continues on to touchdown. For the Soyuz MS-09 entry, the crew planned to follow normal practice, closing the hatch to the upper module before departing the space station. Even if a leak opened back up, it would have no effect on the sealed-off descent module.<\/p>\n

But Russian engineers still wanted to inspect the exterior of the Soyuz\u2019s orbital module to find out if any of the epoxy had made it all the way through the hole and to collect any clues that might be available on the exterior.<\/p>\n

By moving launch of Kononenko and his crewmates up to Dec. 3, and delaying the departure of the Gerst crew, the Russians ensured enough time with a full complement of crew members for a spacewalk by Prokopyev and Kononenko to do just that.<\/p>\n

The cosmonauts ventured outside the station on Dec. 11 and cut through insulation and micrometeoroid shielding on the orbital revealing the site of the leak. They collected samples of the extruded epoxy and any chemical traces on the hull near the hole that will be returned to Earth for laboratory analysis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION NASA astronaut Serena Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor, Expedition 57 commander Alexander Gerst, and Soyuz commander Sergey Prokopyev are set for landing in Kazakhstan Thursday. Credit: Roscosmos Eight days after a dramatic spacewalk to inspect the site of a leak in the hull of his Soyuz ferry ship, Russian commander Sergey Prokopyev, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2799,831,2800,2801,455,1545,717,1771],"class_list":["post-13438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-alexander-gerst","tag-european-space-agency","tag-expedition-56","tag-expedition-57","tag-germany","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-international-space-station","tag-kazakhstan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}