A Soyuz space capsule returned to Earth descending onto a plain in Kazakhstan on Tuesday carrying three astronauts, including Satoshi Furukawa from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Mike Fossum from NASA and Sergei Volkov, a Russian cosmonaut, after all three completed five and a half month mission aboard the International Space Station.
The Japanese astronaut, Furukawa set a record for the longest stay on the station by a Japanese astronaut in a single voyage.
Initially, the program was set to last 161 days but I had to be postponed a week due to the accident of the Russian Progress spacecraft, the Progress M-12M, that crashed just after launching last August.
The three men looked well and had to undergo a checkup in the Station and then another one at landing to get adjusted to gravity.
However, the space conquest does not stop here, NASA's Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin remain onboard the International Space Station in order to realize 37 experiments. They arrived at the Station Wednesday and are due to return to Earth in March. Besides, a launch next month will bring the station back to its normal six-member crew.
Space missions in and outside the ISS keep on coming. The conquest of the Space is far from being over. In fact, this Saturday another scientific laboratory and the rover Curiosity will be sent to Mars. In my opinion this is a very important task and that, as we are doing, we should continue doing experiments and search for new data about something we know so little about.
Article from The Japan Times, Tuesday, Nov. 22
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