Astronaut Q&A: A Violent Return, Odd Welcome to Earth

May 2, 2008 -- NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, a 48-year-old biochemist who grew up on a farm in Iowa, returned to the United States this week after serving six months as the commander of the International Space Station.

In a series of interviews since landing, Whitson talks about the bumpy ride back to Earth, the surprise greeting in a Kazakhstan field and why she's sitting a bit delicately in her chair.

Her crewmates on the Soyuz capsule were Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and South Korea's Yi So-yeon. Russian officials are investigating why the spacecraft returned in a ballistic, rather than aerodynamic, mode, which subjected the crew to more than eight times the force of gravity before hitting the ground about 300 miles short of the landing site in Kazakhstan.

Q: What was it like for you inside the capsule? Were you able to look at each other, talk to each other?

Peggy Whitson: Inside the Soyuz capsule we're all inside a seat liner, and you kind of sit back, so you can't easily put your harness on and look at somebody else. Hardware is sticking out, so I can't see Yuri's face -- I can only see his knees -- and So-yeon's face I couldn't see either. But we have communication; we can talk to each other. We were talking about various events and what was going on and what we needed to look at next in the checklist.

There were interesting things that were slightly different. For instance, at one point after the (propulsion module) separation, there was some (insulation) on the outside next to the windows, and I was like, "Hey Yuri, is that expected?" because … I had talked to various crewmembers and nobody had said anything about that.

Q: Did you immediately realize the propulsion module (which separates from the crew compartment) had hung up?

PW: Not immediately. It took probably a few minutes, maybe a minute or so, before we understood probably something was not exactly right. Yuri noted the (maneuvering) engines were firing, and they shouldn't have been at that particular point.

Q: What kind of motion was it? Were you getting kind of tossed around side to side?

PW: Yuri felt like we were more yawing a little bit, and I felt like I was being pitched forward and back. It could be the orientation in the capsule; we both were feeling something slightly different. Also, the neuro-sensory feelings are pretty screwy coming back in after being in zero-gravity. For instance, I'd been told by several previous crewmembers when the seats raise, it will look like the control panel is falling into your lap. Your neuro-sensory feelings at that point in time aren't always trustworthy.

Q: When you transitioned to ballistic after the modules finally separated, how fast did those gravity forces build up and how long did it last?

PW: The buildup started almost as soon as we transitioned. We felt the engines fire to start our 17-degrees-per-second spin -- that's to maintain the capsule's orientation and give it some stability. As part of that process, over the next probably minute or so, we built up to 8.2 Gs. I think the profile is only a minute, but of course after six months in zero gravity, that felt like a pretty long minute.

Q: What did that feel like?

PW: It's like having several people sit on your chest. It gets pretty hard to breathe. And I could feel my face being pulled back.

Q: What about the landing itself?

PW: Everyone had told me to kind of expect a car crash at the end. That was a pretty accurate description.

Q: When you realized that the rescuers were not official NASA or Russian personnel, did the hilarity of the situation strike you at all?

PW: They pulled So-yeon out. There's no graceful way to get out of the capsule. She had lifted part of her body out, and they pulled her out, and I'd just assumed they were the rescue guys. Yuri had gotten out by himself, and then when it was my turn to get out we had to close the hatch again in order for me to get out 'cause the rescue hardware stuck out enough so that there was no way I could get by the hatch area with my visor on and everything.

I had gotten down to basically where So-yeon's seat was, not exactly in the most graceful manner -- I weighed a little bit more than I remembered -- so I kind of fell down to the bottom, then had to reorient my body to get the hatch back open, and then they assisted me out. I was out lying on the ground, and I noticed these guys. They just didn't have anything, just very poor people who live out on the steppes. You could tell by the way they were dressed. It was like "humm … these aren't rescue guys, these aren't SAR (Search and Rescue)."

They had the Kazak dialect, but one of them spoke enough Russian and he was talking to Yuri and asking him "Where did this boat come from?" and Yuri was like "What boat?" It took a while for Yuri to describe to them that this was a spacecraft and they kept responding with "nola" which means "OK, whatever," and then they would ask another question. They just couldn't comprehend, couldn't believe what they were being involved in.

There were eight people there when we first arrived and two more truckloads of people showed up before the rescue guys did.