Rough landing

An investigation is under way into why the Russian Soyuz capsule carrying NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and guest researcher Yi So-yeon landed more than 250 miles short and nearly three times harder than planned. It took the Russian recovery team a half-hour to find the capsule, which was burnt from overheating during its steep plunge through the atmosphere. It was the third so-called ballistic return of the capsule with a space station crew. Whitson and her crewmates were able to climb out of the Soyuz unassisted while they awaited rescue. The spacecraft is believed to have set off a grass fire at touchdown. Photo by Reuters.

It’s not as if Peggy Whitson, the NASA astronaut returning from a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station was lacking excitement and adventure in her life. During her stint as commander, the 48-year-old biochemist oversaw five different flight engineers, two guest researchers, three shuttle crews, each of which added new rooms to the station, and then the arrival of Europe’s first unmanned cargo ship. She also conducted five spacewalks and somehow managed to make the whole mission look easy and fun.

Whitson surely could have done without the crash landing of the Soyuz capsule which because of a technical glitch dove through the atmosphere much steeper than planned, subjecting the crew to 10 times the force of Earth’s gravity -- nearly triple the usual force. But what was really unnecessary were the off-color comments of yet another Russian official regarding women in space. Whitson, you may remember, was given a going-away gift by her Russian hosts of a whip.

Noting that Whitson was accompanied by another woman aboard the capsule -- with females outnumbering men for the first time ever aboard a spaceship -- Anatoly Perminov, head of the the Russian space agency Roskosmos, cracked that perhaps the landing was rough and off-target because of a superstitious belief that woman on vessels are bad luck.

Course that doesn’t explain the botched landing of the previous, all-male, crew, but as a colleague once joked: “Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.”

Welcome home, Peggy. Times, unfortunately, have not changed much.

Comments

[Dave]

That's a pretty scary picture of the Soyuz landing zone.

Nice blog - just found it - keep up the good work!

djc