Soyuz Capsule's Bumpy Reentry Not a Concern, NASA Says

Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C.
Associated Press

April 23, 2008

NASA yesterday said it wasn't too worried about the turbulent, off-course landing of a Russian Soyuz space capsule on Saturday—the second straight problematic reentry for a Soyuz capsule returning from the International Space Station.

William H. Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, downplayed suggestions that the ship was in trouble during the agency's first comments about the landing.

NASA wasn't aware of any danger, although it didn't ask if the crew was at risk, Gerstenmaier said in a Tuesday news teleconference.

"I don't see this as a major problem," Gerstenmaier added. "But it's clearly something that should not have occurred."

A Russian space official had told the Russian news agency Interfax that the crew was in serious danger during the descent.

Rough Reentry

The capsule's three-person crew was subjected to gravity forces of about eight times Earth's gravity for up to two minutes. Normal Soyuz returns have G-forces of about five.

They felt "a kind of general jostling in their seats that they have not felt before," Gerstenmaier said.

U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson described her descent to Earth in the wayward capsule as "a little more dramatic than I was expecting" in an audio recording released yesterday by NASA.

"I saw 8.2 G's on the meter and it was pretty, pretty dramatic. Gravity's not really my friend right now, and 8 G's was especially not my friend. But it didn't last too long," Whitson said in the recording, apparently referring to the difficulty of readjusting to Earth's gravity after spending a prolonged period of time in space.

Gerstenmaier, who was at Moscow Mission Control when the Soyuz landed 300 miles (480 kilometers) off-course in Kazakhstan, relayed additional details about the landing.

After the landing, it took about 30 minutes before Soyuz flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko called Moscow on a satellite phone to say the crew was OK. But no one was worried because it often takes an entire hour for this to occur, Gerstenmaier said.

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.