{"id":15436,"date":"2016-06-17T22:09:50","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T14:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/three-station-fliers-set-for-saturday-return-to-earth\/"},"modified":"2016-06-17T22:09:50","modified_gmt":"2016-06-17T14:09:50","slug":"three-station-fliers-set-for-saturday-return-to-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/three-station-fliers-set-for-saturday-return-to-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Three station fliers set for Saturday return to Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"Russian
Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko will fly in the center seat on the Soyuz TMA-19M capsule. In this image, he is flanked by Tim Peake (left) and Tim Kopra (right). Credit: NASA\/GCTC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Three space station crew members made final preparations Friday for undocking and landing in Kazakhstan early Saturday to close out a 186-day stay in orbit.<\/p>\n

Soyuz TMA-19M commander Yuri Malenchenko, NASA flight engineer Timothy Kopra and British astronaut Timothy Peake plan to undock from the International Space Station\u2019s Earth-facing Rassvet module at 1:52 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) Saturday to begin the three-and-a-half hour return to Earth.<\/p>\n

Left behind aboard the space station will be Expedition 48 commander Jeffrey Williams and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka, who arrived at the lab complex aboard the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft on March 18.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll have the station to themselves until July 9 when three fresh crew members \u2014 Anatoly Ivanishin, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins arrive aboard the Soyuz MS-01 ferry ship.<\/p>\n

During a brief change-of-command ceremony Friday morning, Kopra, commander of Expedition 47, turned the station over to Williams, saying \u201cit\u2019s been a tremendous honor to serve with this crew. I can\u2019t think of a better group of people to spend time with in space and to work with. I\u2019m very, very grateful for that opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know, Jeff, that the station is in great hands and I\u2019m proud to be able to pass off this command to you today,\u201d Kopra said.<\/p>\n

Williams, in turn, congratulated the departing crew members \u201cfor a successful stay on the International Space Station.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve made our stay so far \u2026 extremely productive and rewarding,\u201d he said. \u201cWe wish you a safe return to Earth and a safe return to your families.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crew spent the rest of the day completing their packing and readying the Soyuz for the trip home.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Soyuz commander, Yuri, has been really busy the last week or two finding every little nook and cranny in the Soyuz, putting everything in the exact right place,\u201d said station veteran Terry Virts. \u201cIf the capsule has too much stuff on the right side or too much stuff on the left side, it won\u2019t fly properly through the atmosphere. So it\u2019s a bit of an involved process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Russian
Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin (top left), NASA astronaut Jeff Williams (top row middle) and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka (top right) will stay on as crew members for Expedition 48. Peake, Kopra and Malenchenko are scheduled to come back to Earth on Saturday. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Flight controllers, meanwhile, continued to review telemetry to find out what caused an electrical component that helps convert raw energy from the station\u2019s solar arrays into tightly regulated direct current electricity to fail overnight Thursday, cutting power to a few smoke detectors, electrical outlets and hull heaters.<\/p>\n

Officials said no critical systems were affected. The DC-to-DC Converter Unit, or DDCU, in question is located inside the space station and spares are available on board. But flight controllers do not plan to take any corrective action until after Kopra\u2019s crew departs and engineers complete a failure analysis.<\/p>\n

Malenchenko, Kopra and Peake plan to bid their crewmates farewell and close the hatch to their Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft around 10:35 p.m. Friday.<\/p>\n

After undocking and moving a safe distance away, Malenchenko will monitor a programmed four-minute 37-second rocket firing, starting at 4:22:07 a.m., to slow the spacecraft by about 286 mph, just enough to drop the far side of its orbit deep into the atmosphere for an approach to Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n

Just before plunging back into the thick lower atmosphere at an altitude of 62 miles, the three modules making up the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft will separate and the central crew compartment will orient itself heat shield forward, entering the zone of peak heating at an altitude of about 50 miles around 5:53 a.m.<\/p>\n

If all goes well, the descent module\u2019s main parachute will deploy about seven minutes later and the crew will drop to a jarring rocket-assisted touchdown on the steppe of Kazakhstan around 5:14:39 a.m. (3:14 p.m. local time) about 90 miles from the town of Dzhezkazgan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russian saying is \u2018soft landings,’\u201d Williams told Kopra and his crewmates Friday, \u201cbut those of us who have done it know there\u2019s nothing soft about it! But you\u2019re ready to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a NASA interview Friday, Virts provided a dramatic description of a Soyuz landing he made last year and thanked former astronaut Scott Kelly for warning him about what to expect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole thing is a crazy experience,\u201d he said. \u201cHad Scott not briefed us on it, we would have thought we were going to die. But because we knew what was coming, we had a great time, we were having a lot of fun, we were kind of hooting and hollering in the capsule. It\u2019s like the best roller coaster ride you\u2019ve ever been on in your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

After watching the spacecraft\u2019s heat shield burn away in a 4,000-degree plasma just outside the descent module\u2019s porthole \u201cthe big parachute comes out, and for a few minutes you\u2019re sitting there and you don\u2019t really know when the Earth\u2019s coming because the Earth\u2019s behind you. \u2026 You really can\u2019t see what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then, BAM! There is the worst car crash you have ever been in, and when we hit, our Soyuz rolled over, so there was this gigantic crash. \u2026 So it was kind of an amazing experience. It\u2019s worth the six months in space just to get the return to Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"This
This view shows the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft docked to the space station\u2019s Rassvet module. Credit: Tim Peake\/ESA\/NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Russian recovery crews, NASA and ESA personnel will be staged nearby to help Malenchenko, Kopra and Peake out of the cramped descent module as they begin the long re-adjustment to the unfamiliar tug of gravity.<\/p>\n

After brief medical checks and satellite phone calls home to friends and family, the returning fliers will be flown by helicopter to Karaganda for a traditional Kazakh welcome home ceremony. From there, Malenchenko will board a Russian jet for the flight back to Star City near Moscow.<\/p>\n

Kopra and Peake will board a NASA jet and fly to Norway, where Peake will change to a European Space Agency plane for a flight to Cologne, Germany. Kopra will continue on to his home near the Johnson Space Center in Houston.<\/p>\n

Assuming an on-time touchdown, mission duration will be 185 days 22 hours and 11 minutes since blastoff Dec. 15, a flight covering 2,976 orbits and nearly 78 million miles.<\/p>\n

Malenchenko, who logged 641.5 days aloft during five previous space flights, including a stay aboard the Russian Mir space station and a shuttle flight, will boost his total time in space to 827.4 days, moving him up to No. 2 on the list of most experienced space fliers. The record is held by Gennady Padalka, who has 878.5 days in space over five missions.<\/p>\n

Kopra, veteran of a previous station visit, will have logged 244 days off planet while Peake, the second British citizen to fly in space and the first to visit the station, will have spent 186 days in orbit.<\/p>\n

During the course of their stay aboard the space lab, Malenchenko, Kopra and Peake helped receive two Russian Progress freighters, a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship, an Orbital ATK supply craft and the Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft that delivered Williams, Ovchinin and Skripochka.<\/p>\n

Kopra carried out two spacewalks totaling seven hours and 59 minutes while Peake and Malenchenko conducted one each. It was Malenchenko\u2019s sixth spacewalk over his five flights.<\/p>\n

The crew also helped install an expandable crew module now attached to the aft port of the Tranquility module for two years of tests to determine its ability to stand up to the rigors of the space environment. If all goes well, larger expandable modules under development at Bigelow Aerospace in Law Vegas could serve as habitats for commercial space stations or eventual deep space voyages to Mars.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been so privileged to work here on board with a huge variety of science experiments that we know are going to be a stepping stone for human exploration,\u201d Kopra said Friday. \u201cAnd we\u2019ve demonstrated, both from the ground (and) the crew on board, together we\u2019ve demonstrated that we have a world-class international laboratory.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had technology demonstrations where we\u2019ve launched satellites, we have an inflatable module, the first of its kind, docked to the space station and so it\u2019s been a privilege for all of us to be able to participate in all of these different activities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko will fly in the center seat on the Soyuz TMA-19M capsule. In this image, he is flanked by Tim Peake (left) and Tim Kopra (right). Credit: NASA\/GCTC Three space station crew members made final preparations Friday for undocking and landing in Kazakhstan early Saturday […]<\/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":[831,3678,3605,1545,717,3606,1302,3679],"class_list":["post-15436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-european-space-agency","tag-expedition-47","tag-expedition-48","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-international-space-station","tag-jeff-williams","tag-soyuz","tag-soyuz-tma-19m"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15436"}],"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=15436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}