A Soyuz spacecraft carrying U.S. space station commander Peggy Whitson and South Korea’s first astronaut landed 260 miles off course in Kazakhstan on Saturday after a re-entry that subjected the crew to as much as 10 times the force of gravity.
The Associate Press quotes Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin as calling the crew’s condition “satisfactory.” Whitson, South Korean bioengineer Yi So-yeon, and Russian flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko were being examined on-site by medical personnel and will be later flown to Moscow for further evaluation.
The Soyuz suffered a malfunction that sent it into a steep “ballistic re-entry,” subjecting the crew to high G forces. The last Soyuz to return from the International Space Station suffered a similar malfunction, as did one in May 2003.
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