News

March 16, 2013.
Soyuz TMA-06M flight is completed. Crewmembers О. Novitsky, Е. Tarelkin and K. Ford are on the ground!

Soyuz TMA-06M transport manned vehicle descent capsule (DC) landed at 07:06 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.

Russian cosmonauts Оleg Novitskiy, Evgeny Tarelkin and NASA astronaut Kevin Ford completed their flight to the International Space Station (ISS) under the ISS Expedition 33/34 Program.

At Mission Control Center in Moscow (MCC-M) Soyuz TMA-06M 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 V.A. Lopota, Technical Manager of flight tests of manned space complexes, 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-34/35 crew consisting of cosmonaut R. Romanenko and astronauts C. Hadfield and T. Marshburn will continue their work aboard the ISS before the arrival of the next Russian transport manned vehicle.

Upon evacuation of the crew from Soyuz-06M 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 О. Novitsky, Е. Tarelkin and К. Ford was 143 days 16 hours 14 min.

The vehicle landed on a reserve date on March 16, inasmuch as a nominal descent planned on March 15 was postponed due to unfavourable weather conditions at the landing site.

During the space flight the ISS-34 crew received two Russian Progress cargo vehicles, one manned transport vehicle Soyuz ТМА-07М and US logistics vehicle Dragon (SpX-2), fulfilled the planned scientific and applied research program.