The astronaut and cosmonauts made a soft landing in Kazakhstan
Avi Blizovsky
Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/iss241004.html
A Russian-American space crew landed in Kazakhstan this morning after returning the International Space Prize.
The Russian cosmonaut Yuri Shargin who stayed only a week on the station and his colleagues Gennady Padlaka and Michael Fink who stayed on the station for six months landed on Earth at 00:35 GMT.
A team of two new astronauts - Shalizian Sharipov and Leroy Chiao are now on the space station and have two spacewalks planned for them during their stay there.
The Soyuz TMA-4 spacecraft landed about 90 kilometers north of Ir Arkalik, but it took several minutes to locate it due to the almost total darkness in the Kazakhstan steppe at this early morning.
The crew members were put into sleeping bags and given hot drinks, before being transferred to the temporary mobile hospital set up for them. "We found them without problems thanks to the radio transmission and gave them tea, and now they are undergoing medical tests." said Sergey Stashenko, a member of the rescue team.
The three were flown to the city of stars near Moscow - where the center of the Russian space program is located. Fink stole a few minutes to talk to his family on the phone.
The station's new team - Team 10 will investigate plant growth and conduct experiments on possible AIDS vaccines. They also plan to perform two spacewalks as mentioned. This is the fourth trip made to the International Space Station using Soyuz spacecraft since shuttle flights were suspended due to the Columbia disaster. Team 9 - which included Padalka and Fink completed six months on duty and together with the overlaps, the two spent 190 days aboard the International Space Station.
Shargin spent only eight days on the space station after arriving with the replacement crew.
Yadan International Space Station
For news at the BBC
https://www.hayadan.org.il/BuildaGate4/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~~~982543111~~~88&SiteName=hayadan
