News

July 1, 2012.
Soyuz TMA-03M mission is accomplished, the crew has returned back to Earth!

At 12:14:50 Moscow Time, the descent vehicle of Soyuz TMA-03M manned transportation spacecraft landed in the designated landing area 148 km to the South-East of Jezkazgan in the Republic of Kazakhstan. All the operations associated with the descent, search and landing of the descent vehicle went normally.

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Donald Pettit, and ESA astronaut Andre Kuipers have completed their mission to the International Space Station (ISS) under the program of Expedition ISS-30/31.

Continuing to work onboard the space station is the crew of Expedition Thirty Two to the International Space Station: Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin, NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba.

At the Mission Control Center near Moscow (MCC-M), the work in support of the Soyuz TMA-03M de-orbiting maneuvers and re-entry, the search for the landed descent vehicle and evacuation of the crew from it was performed under the supervision of the State Commission (The Chairman is the Head of the Federal Space Agency V.A. Popovkin) and the Technical Management for flight tests of manned space systems (headed by President and General Designer of the S.P. Korolev RSC Energia V.A. Lopota).

During re-entry the flight was controlled by the Lead Operations Control Team (Flight Director is the First deputy general designer of RSC Energia V.A. Soloviev) working at MCC-M in cooperation with the specialists of the Air and Space Search and Rescue, other Russian organizations and services, as well as the US Mission Control Center in Houston.

The final descent and landing operations of the spacecraft were witnessed by the representatives of Roskosmos, NASA, ESA, Russian companies and organizations involved in the ISS program who were present at MCC-M.

After crew evacuation from the descent vehicle of the Soyuz TMA-03M, a press conference was held at MCC-M for Russian and foreign mass media.

For information:

RSC Energia is the prime manned space flight organization in the Russian rocket and space industry, responsible for the development of the ISS Russian Segment, its integration into the Space Station and its operation, including development and operation of the principal modules of the Segment (Zvezda, Pirs, Poisk, Rassvet, Nauka etc.), manufacturing, launch and operation of Soyuz TMA and Progress M spacecraft.

The duration of the space mission of Oleg Kononenko, Donald Pettit and Andre Kuipers was 192 days and 19 hours.