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Sep 14, 2013
A Landing on Planet Earth
Image Credit & Copyright: Astronomy Picture of the Day -- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Courtesy of http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
A Landing on Planet Earth
Image Credit & Copyright: Astronomy Picture of the Day -- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Courtesy of http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
With parachute
deployed and retro-rockets blazing,
this spacecraft landed on planet Earth on September 11 (UT)
in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.
Seen in silhouette against the rockets' glare, the
spacecraft is a Soyuz TMA-08M.
Its crew, Expedition 36 Commander Pavel
Vinogradov and Flight Engineer Alexander Misurkin
of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos),
and Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy of NASA were
returning after five and half months
aboard the
International Space Station.
The Soyuz retro-rockets
fire
very quickly and for an extremely short duration
near
touchdown.
Capturing the moment, the well-timed photograph was taken
from a helicopter flying over the landing site.
