“Landing confirmed! Let’s go work!” – Soyuz TMA-05M landing tour

Early frosty morning in a steppe of Kazakhstan. Silence. Stiff faces of people peering at darkness. Bang somewhere in the sky. “Aboard!” commanded. And a crazy race on the cross-country terrain towards the place of landing.

Once again our company has arranged a unique tour to the landing site of descent module of Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft. The crew of commander Yuri Malenchenko, Roskosmos, flight engineers Sunita Williams, NASA, and Akihiko Hoshide, JAXA, has successfully landed north-east from Arkalyk city at 50:53:30 Moscow time. In spite of the whole complexity of this operation, high G-loads during the atmospheric entry and accumulated fatigue after the long ISS mission all crewmembers felt pretty good.

Following the old good tradition, representatives of Japanese mass media joined our expedition to welcome an astronaut of Japan. Both sever climatic conditions and a challenge of overnight stay in the steppe failed to scare our brave journalists. And we have to notice that their courage was properly rewarded. Our team arrived at the landing point together with the first ground search and rescue vehicles.

Journalists from the Land of the Rising Sun evidenced and managed to film all the search and rescue activities, starting with the evacuation of crewmembers from the capsule and their transfer to the mobile hospital for the initial medical examination and ending up with take-off of their helicopters to bring astronauts to the aerodrome of Kostanay. Perfect reports sent to the motherland became not just tradition but even a standard for our guests.

The long way back from the steppe, the sense of fulfilled duty and grate spirits – all this is a good matter for making an exciting city tour through the capital of Kazakhstan, the city of Astana. This modern and continuously growing city amazes with its beauty even in winter.

One more mission to the ISS is completed, but the station keeps operating to make it useful for the mankind. We also keep working on making your adventures inerasable. See you at the space ways!