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Malenchenko said it was not yet clear what caused the unusual descent. "There was no action of the crew that led to this," he said. "Time will tell what went wrong." It was the second time in a row -- and the third since 2003 -- that the Soyuz landing had gone awry. Officials said the craft followed a so-called "ballistic re-entry" -- a very steep trajectory that subjects the crew to extreme physical force. Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said the crew had experienced gravitational forces up to 10 times those on Earth during the 3 1/2-hour descent. Yi traveled to the international space station on April 10, along with cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, who have replaced Whitson and Malenchenko. South Korea paid Russia $20 million for Yi's flight. Whitson and Malenchenko spent roughly six months performing experiments and maintaining the orbiting station and were replaced by Volkov and Kononenko. They joined American astronaut Garrett Reisman, who arrived last month on the U.S. space shuttle Endeavour. According to NASA, Whitson, 48, set a new American record for cumulative time in space -- 377 days. Related Links: Irene Klotz's blog: Free Space |
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