Rescuers pulled crew members out of capsule
Three cosmonaut ISS landed on December 20 after a hectic stay on the International Space Station. It is worth recalling that their expedition was marred by air leakage and the failure of a rocket launcher with an emergency landing.
Roskosmos reported that the Soyuz spacecraft, on board of which were Alexander Gerst, Serina Aunon-Chancellor and Sergey Prokopiev, landed safely in Kazakhstan. It was not possible to demonstrate the direct broadcasting of the landing due to thick fog over the snowy Kazakh steppe.
The rescuers took the crew members out of the capsule. Prokopiev and Anunon-Chancellor looked pale and weakened due to a long stay in weightlessness, but Gerst smiled and managed to give an interview to representatives of German television. When they started in June, they were considered one of the least experienced teams on the ISS. Only Gerst flew into space in 2014.
Astronauts Serina Aunon-Chancellor, Sergey Prokopiev and Alexander Gerst set off for the orbital station in June
In total, Alexander Gerst from Germany spent at the station 363 days, which was a record for the European Space Agency. After all the procedures, he went to Cologne.
Air leak
The first serious incident in the crew’s mission occurred in August when crew members noticed an air leak in the Soyuz spacecraft attached to the station. They quickly found a small hole and sealed it. But representatives of Russia launched an investigation, and Dmitry Rogozin even suggested the possibility of sabotage in space, since they excluded the option of a defect in the manufacture of a spacecraft.
The spacecraft landed safely in Kazakhstan
Last week, Prokopiev and Oleg Kononenko performed a spacewalk, spending 8 hours to receive samples from the site of damage. The hole is in the section, which should burn in the atmosphere during their descent, so they decided to conduct an investigation in orbit. Kononenko said that he had noticed a strange fluffy and yellow deposit around the hole, but no one has yet made any official conclusions.
Prokopyev delivered the samples to Earth and provided them for laboratory analysis. Initially, landing on Earth was planned for December 13, but the schedule was postponed after the October crash of the Russian rocket.
Gerst spent on the ISS 363 days, which is considered a record for the European Space Agency
Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Tyler Haig launched on the ISS on October 11, but the Soyuz rocket failed, which made it necessary to perform an emergency landing. No one was hurt then.
The first successful launch of the crew of the ISS after the failure was performed on December 3. On board were Kononenko, McClain Ann Charlotte and David Saint-Jacques.
Last week, Prokopiev and Kononenko performed a spacewalk to explore a hole in the Soyuz spacecraft
