A Soyuz capsule carrying a US space tourist and two Russians bumped down safely in Kazakhstan yesterday, ending a string of mishaps on previous landings that have raised concerns about its safety.
“I feel great. I feel very good. Re-entry was perfectly smooth,” a smiling Richard Garriott, who paid US$35 million for his 12-day journey into space, said after a Russian recovery team extracted him from the capsule.
Charred black from its fiery re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, the craft slowed its descent with a large parachute and fired special gunpowder engines to cushion its landing.
PHOTO: AP
“The team reported that they felt fine,” the mission control’s spokesman Valery Lyndin, adding that a helicopter accompanied the capsule as it landed.
Garriott and cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko landed in Kazakhstan’s steppe at 7:34am before being extracted from the capsule.
It came to rest in a puff of dust in a field 80km north of the town of Arkalyk as planned.
A NASA Television live feed from a mission control center in Moscow described it as a flawless on-target landing.
Its success was a relief for Russian and US officials who have been worried about the landings after the capsule malfunctioned twice over the past year, subjecting crews to dangerous “ballistic” re-entries.
A ballistic landing is steeper than a normal one and subjects crews to massive gravitational forces. A South Korean astronaut said she feared death during such a landing in April.
“I don’t recall such a perfect landing as this one,” Anatoly Perminov, head of Russia’s space agency Roskosmos, told reporters in Moscow. “We did everything that was possible and more, and the landing was just ideal. The crew feel fine.”
After the touch down, recovery teams surrounded the capsule, opened the hatch and extracted the cosmonauts as the first rays of the morning sun lit up the barren steppes of Kazakhstan.
Garriott, a US video game magnate, came back from the International Space Station alongside Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko.
The American, son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, and Volkov, whose father Alexander was in space when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, are the first second-generation spacemen to fly together — a symbolic act at a time when US-Russia relations are particularly tense.
“This was a pinnacle experience and the ride up on Soyuz was phenomenal — what a beautiful machine,” said Garriott, as his father came over and shook his hand at the capsule.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
REVENGE: Trump said he had the support of the Syrian government for the strikes, which took place in response to an Islamic State attack on US soldiers last week The US launched large-scale airstrikes on more than 70 targets across Syria, the Pentagon said on Friday, fulfilling US President Donald Trump’s vow to strike back after the killing of two US soldiers. “This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance,” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote on social media. “Today, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue.” The US Central Command said that fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery targeted ISIS infrastructure and weapon sites. “All terrorists who are evil enough to attack Americans are hereby warned
Seven wild Asiatic elephants were killed and a calf was injured when a high-speed passenger train collided with a herd crossing the tracks in India’s northeastern state of Assam early yesterday, local authorities said. The train driver spotted the herd of about 100 elephants and used the emergency brakes, but the train still hit some of the animals, Indian Railways spokesman Kapinjal Kishore Sharma told reporters. Five train coaches and the engine derailed following the impact, but there were no human casualties, Sharma said. Veterinarians carried out autopsies on the dead elephants, which were to be buried later in the day. The accident site
RUSHED: The US pushed for the October deal to be ready for a ceremony with Trump, but sometimes it takes time to create an agreement that can hold, a Thai official said Defense officials from Thailand and Cambodia are to meet tomorrow to discuss the possibility of resuming a ceasefire between the two countries, Thailand’s top diplomat said yesterday, as border fighting entered a third week. A ceasefire agreement in October was rushed to ensure it could be witnessed by US President Donald Trump and lacked sufficient details to ensure the deal to end the armed conflict would hold, Thai Minister of Foreign Affairs Sihasak Phuangketkeow said after an ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in Kuala Lumpur. The two countries agreed to hold talks using their General Border Committee, an established bilateral mechanism, with Thailand
RSS