Malenchenko "detected some smoke in the cabin," Gerstenmaier added. Then the NASA official said that it was "maybe not smoke, but actually the smell of burning materials" and that is not uncommon.
Malenchenko managed to get out of the capsule on his own, but Whitson and South Korea's first astronaut, Yi So-yeon, received help from locals in the area.
"It wasn't the search and rescue who got us out of the capsule. It was just some guys that had seen it and drove in," Whitson said in the recording. "They probably saw the fire and drove in toward the scene."
NASA spokesperson John Yembrick said the fire was not related to the Soyuz landing but occurred nearby where farmers were burning grass.
Alexander Vorobyov, a spokesperson for the Russian Federal Space Agency, said it was common for a Soyuz hatch and antenna to have heat damage during re-entry. He said investigators classified the scorching as three on a five-point scale.
Questions Remain
Saturday's bone-jarring landing happened after the capsule went into an unplanned ballistic reentry. The Russians thought they had solved the descent problem after it cropped up last October, and NASA agreed with their original analysis that a frayed wire was to blame, Gerstenmaier said.
However, the ship that landed Saturday was inspected in orbit and didn't have frayed wiring, he said, acknowledging that the original investigation went wrong.
"We may have missed the probable cause," Gerstenmaier said.
Still, NASA is satisfied with the way Russia is handling the mishap and hasn't asked to be part of the investigation, he said.
"I have complete confidence in what the Russians are doing. They were very concerned about this," he said. "They treated this with the same diligence as we would in the United States."
But when NASA officials testify to Congress about the International Space Station on Thursday, they will be grilled about the incident.
"I'm obviously concerned any time a human space flight mission doesn't go as planned. We need to get more information about what happened and why, as well as what will be done to keep it from happening again," said House Science Committee Chairman Bart Gordon.
Associated Press Writer Mike Eckel contributed to this report from Moscow.
