spacetoday.net: Soyuz lands on target

Posted: Fri, Oct 24, 2008, 8:25 AM ET (1225 GMT)
Soyuz TMA-12 landing

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russian cosmonauts and an American commercial passenger landed safely in Kazakhstan early Friday, avoiding reentry problems that plagued two previous missions. The Soyuz TMA-12 capsule landed on target northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, at 11:37 pm EDT Thursday (0337 GMT Friday). The three men in the capsule, Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononeko and American space tourist Richard Garriott, were all reported to be in good health after landing. Officials said the Soyuz had a normal reentry profile, and the landing was in the targeted zone. Two previous Soyuz spacecraft had suffered ballistic reentries, generating higher g-loads for the crews and causing the capsules to land several hundred kilometers off-target. That problem was linked to a problem with an explosive bolt that prevented the reentry capsule from cleanly separating from its propulsion module. The problem has been fixed on later Soyuz flights, and Volkov and Kononeko performed a spacewalk in July to remove the problematic bolt from their spacecraft.