News

November 19, 2012.
Soyuz TMA-05M flight is completed with a pinpoint ground landing!

Soyuz TMA-05M transport manned vehicle descent capsule (DC) landed at 05:53:30 Moscow time in a specified region to north-east of the town of Arkalyk, Republic of Kazakstan. All DC reentry, search and landing operations were performed as designed.

Cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko, astronauts Sunita Williams and Аkihiko Hoshide completed their flight to the International Space Station (ISS) under the ISS Expedition 32/33 Program.

At Mission Control Center in Moscow (MCC-M) Soyuz TMA-05M deorbit and reentry maneuvers, search of the landed vehicle and crew evacuation were performed under control of the State Commission on flight tests of manned space complexes, V.А. Popovkin, Director of Roscosmos, and Technical Manager of flight tests of manned space complexes, V.A. Lopota, President of RSC Energia, General Designer.

The vehicle reentry flight was controlled by the Lead operational control team (Flight Director is V.А. Soloviev, First Deputy General Designer of RSC Energia) working at MCC-M in interaction with aviation and space search and rescue specialists, other Russian organizations and services, as well as the US Mission Control Center in Houston.

During the final vehicle reentry and landing operations the Mission Control Center was attended by Roscosmos and foreign space agencies representatives, Russian enterprises and organizations participating in the implementation of the ISS program.

The ISS-33/34 crew consisting of cosmonauts O. Novitskiy, E. Tarelkin and astronaut K. Ford will continue their work aboard the ISS before the arrival of the next Russian transport manned vehicle.

Upon evacuation of the crew from Soyuz-05M vehicle a press conference was held at MCC for the 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 its principal modules (Zvezda, Pirs, Poisk, Rassvet, Nauka etc.), manufacturing, launch and operation of Soyuz TMA and Progress M spacecraft.

The duration of a space flight performed by Yu. Malenchenko, S. Williams and А. Hoshide was 126 days.

During the space flight the ISS-33 crew received three Russian Progress cargo vehicles, participated in operations with European and Japanese transport vehicles, fulfilled the planned scientific and applied research program. Yury Malenchenko made an egress into space under the Russian program with a total duration of 5 hours 50 minutes.