Space station crew lucky to survive re-entry: agency

Three astronauts were lucky to survive a dangerous re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere last week, a Russian news agency reported Tuesday, citing a source close to an investigation into the incident.

"The fact that the crew members remained unharmed, in one piece, was very lucky. Everything could have ended much worse," the source was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. Their fate was "on a razor's edge," he said.

South Korea's first astronaut and her Russian and US colleagues on Monday said they were recovering well after an unconventional "ballistic" descent to Earth on Saturday that landed hundreds of kilometres (miles) off target.

Interfax's source said the Russian-designed Soyuz landing capsule was facing the wrong direction when it entered the atmosphere, depriving it of the protection of its heat-resistant shield.

"If the hatch had been burnt through and the nearby... parachute damaged, the crew might not have survived," the source was quoted as saying.

Korean scientist Yi So-Yeon was returning from a nine-day visit to the International Space Station with NASA's Peggy Whitson and Russian cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko, who each spent over six months on board.

Š 2008 AFP

ť Next Article in Space & Earth science - Space Exploration: Moondust and Duct Tape

would you recommend this story?

User Rating

4.2 out of 5 after 17 total votes

not at all
1
2
3
4
5
highly

Leave a Comment or

Flag

Posted by drknowledge 04/22/08 20:12

Rank: 5/5 after 3 votes

One of the great benefits of sharing the space program with the Russians is that, with the openness, everyone can learn lessons from this near-disaster. In the days of the USSR, such accidents were routinely hushed up, without improving the potential, for example, for the US to avoid such risks. Openness and international cooperation is the way to go for space exploration, now that the alternate role of the boosters as weapons is diminished.