Home With A Thud

Back home! Image: NASA (Image of the day)

Two members of the Expedition 18 crew and a space tourist returned to Earth from the International Space Station this morning — safe and sound. I always wonder about the thud at the end and how it compares to hitting water.

Astronaut Mike Fincke, cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov and tourist Charles Simonyi were inside the Soyuz spacecraft as it landed on the terra firma in southern Kazakahstan.

Fincke and Lonchakov left Expedition 19 Commander Gennady Padalka, Flight Engineer Mike Baratt and JAXA’s Koichi Wakata aboard the ISS. They will be joined in May by Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, Canadian Space Agency’s Robert Thirsk (way to go Canada!!) and ESA’s Frank De Winne. Together they will comprise the first six-person crew aboard the ISS. When they get together it will also be the fist time each of the five partners will be living on the ISS at the same time as a crew.