The chronicle of a successful landing – right from Mission Control!

Hi everyone!

Yesterday I was lucky enough to personally watch the landing of the Soyuz MS-27 descent module from the RKA Mission Control Center in the town of Korolyov just outside Moscow. And it was a wholly interesting event! Surprisingly, taking photos was allowed, with the press up on the balcony reporting live. I too was up on the same balcony – and it all looked like this:

// Curiously, down on the right there are two flags next to each other – those of Russia and the U.S., which is quite a rarity these days.

Launches and landings of spacecraft – especially manned ones – are rather long-winded processes. When landing, the cosmonauts close the hatches more than three hours before undocking (six hours and 40+ minutes before the actual landing), undocking from the ISS occurs around two hours and 30 minutes before braking begins, and from the beginning of braking to touching down on Earth it’s just under an hour.

As for altitudes:

07:32 Moscow time (32 minutes before landing): Soyuz is still in its assembled state – the habitation module, descent module (DM), and service module all together flying at an altitude of 232km somewhere over Africa ->

07:40 (24 minutes before landing): the modules separate, and the DM is somewhere over Saudi Arabia getting ready to enter Earth’s atmosphere ->

Entry into the atmosphere, braking, and a cloud of hot plasma around the DM ->

In this segment (braking and plasma), communication with the spacecraft gets interrupted ->

For a more precise landing, the module is steered a touch ->

Altitude 37km – 24 minutes to landing ->

The reloads during landing (ОСП = MRS (the main parachute system)) ->

The parachute descent – 12 minutes to landing ->

Meanwhile, down on/just above Earth – all-terrain vehicles and helicopters, teams of specialists, doctors, journalists, and some other folks are all heading out to the expected landing site…

…On the Kazakh steppe ->

And – touchdown! But this photo seems to be just a placeholder for all landings. Where’s the snow? And why is the DM standing upright – even though on landing it fell onto its side?

Bolts are unscrewed to open the hatch ->

For some reason a whole crowd people has gathered around the DM ->

Now, I’m no expert on space matters, but judging by the footage, most of the folks were just wandering about and taking selfies with the descent module in the background :). Never mind; main thing: off to the side, some comfy chairs were waiting for the three heroes ->

First to be carried out was the ship’s captain – 24 (!) minutes after landing. Why so long? Still, again, I’m no expert on space programs, so maybe I’m missing something.

The captain was in great shape, smiling now and then, and seemed to be joking (there was no sound).

There’s a doctor on hand. For some reason, she’s just in a jacket with a fur collar and jeans. I always thought they were supposed to get some sort of uniform! ->

Alexey Zubritsky (the flight engineer) wasn’t so lucky – they had to carry him to a separate tent, with a team of medics following right behind. It was his first flight, and apparently something didn’t go as planned.

And last but not least – Jonny Kim, an American, who was helped out, smiling, more than 30 minutes after landing ->

And that was that! The mission had returned to Earth successfully! Let’s hope Alexey’s already on the mend…