Soyuz TMA-19 - Undocking and Landing

Undocking and Landing

Soyuz TMA-19 undocked from the space station at 01:19 GMT on November 26, 2010. The descent module landed on the central steppes of Kazakhstan at 04:46 GMT, four days earlier than originally planned. The landing had been set for November 30, but Kazakh officials decided to restrict air traffic before the start of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, set for December 1–2. The landing site was located 84 km away from the city of Arkalyk.

On November 25, 2010, the crew boarded Soyuz TMA-19 to return to Earth. After closing the hatchway between the Soyuz and the station at 22:14 GMT, they donned their Sokol spacesuits and continued with the power up operations. The crew also activated the Soyuz systems and removed the docking clamps. The undock command was issued at 01:20 GMT when the Soyuz and the station was flying above the Russian-Mongolian border. The physical separation occurred three minutes later at 01:23:13 GMT.

After the separation from the station and at a short distance away, Soyuz TMA-19 executed the so-called “separation burn” (a 15 seconds burn) to vacate the proximity of the space station. About two and half hours later, at 03:55:12 GMT, the Soyuz spacecraft performed the deorbit maneuver which lasted for 4 minutes and 21 seconds, while it flew backwards over the south-central Atlantic Ocean on a north easterly trajectory towards Asia. With the deorbit burn nominally accomplished, the recovery forces comprising 14 helicopters, 4 airplanes and 7 search and rescue vehicles were dispatched to the landing zone. At an altitude of 140 kilometers, just above the first traces of the Earth's atmosphere, onboard computers commanded the separation of the three Soyuz TMA-19 modules. With the crew inside the Descent Module, the forward Orbital Module and the rear Instrumentation Module were pyrotechnically nominally jettisoned at 04:21 GMT. Three minutes after the separation, with the heat shield of the Descent Module pointing towards the direction of travel, the Soyuz capsule experienced the first traces of the atmosphere ("entry interface") at 04:23 GMT at an altitude of 400,000 feet above the Earth. Around 04:28 GMT, the flight path of the capsule crossed the Mediterranean, Turkey and the Black Sea before flying over southern Russia and into Kazakhstan.

At an altitude of about 10 kilometers, onboard computers started a commanded sequence to unfurl the parachutes. Two "pilot" parachutes deployed first, extracting a 24-square-meter drogue parachute. The parachute deployment reduced the velocity of the Soyuz capsule from 230 m/s to 80 m/s and assisted in the capsule’s stability by creating a gentle spin for the Soyuz spacecraft. Once the drogue chute was released, the main parachutes were deployed. They further reduced the descent to 7.2 m/s. Initially, the Descent Module hung underneath the main parachute at a 30-degree angle with respect to the horizon and for the few minutes before the landing, then following the detachment of the bottom-most harness it hung vertically. At this time, flight controllers reported the Soyuz spacecraft was operating as expected on the automatic sequence. During the same time, they were successful in contacting the crew via the fixed-wing aircraft that served as the central command for the search and recovery forces. The recovery forces spotted the Soyuz TMA-19 around 04:36 GMT. At an altitude of five kilometers, the module's heat shield was jettisoned.

At the end of the 163-day voyage, Soyuz TMA-19's landing was confirmed at 04:46 GMT. The recovery team assisted the crew to exit the capsule. First out of the capsule was cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin followed by NASA astronauts Shannon Walker and Douglas Wheelock.

After the successful landing, the Soyuz TMA-19 crew flew to Kustanai in Kazakhstan for the welcoming ceremony. Wheelock and Walker boarded a NASA jet waiting for them in Kustanai for the trip back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Yurchikhin headed for Star City – the home of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia.