Tense search for Soyuz crew

Officials will investigate why the capsule plunged through the atmosphere, landing 300 miles off target.

KOROLYOV, Russia - A group of senior Russian officials were absent Sunday when mission control celebrated the safe return of the international space station crew. They left during the agonizing two-hour search for the capsule to prepare for the worst.

Space officials Sunday began investigating why a Russian Soyuz capsule carrying two Americans and one Russian home from the international space station dropped steeply to Earth nearly 300 miles short of the landing site.

Although the three astronauts safely climbed out of the capsule, the landing was by no means an unqualified success. Instead of a controlled descent at a gentle angle, the spacecraft plunged sharply from about 50 miles above the Earth's surface.

That probably subjected the crew to up to nine times the force of the Earth's gravity, nearly twice the gravitational force of a guided descent, according to Russian space officials and NASA documents.

During at least part of its re-entry, the craft was essentially in a free fall, with its descent later slowed by parachutes.

The morning began with the American and Russian space chiefs, Sean O'Keefe and Yuri Koptev, seated side by side next to small Russian and American flags in the cavernous control room. The sprawling Russian space complex just outside Moscow once was the glory of the Soviet Union and is now dilapidated and invaded by stray dogs.

They draped their arms casually over the backs of their chairs and chatted through an interpreter, big smiles across their faces.

Regular reports confirmed that everything was on target and all systems were operating normally after the Soyuz capsule detached from the space station. Computer graphics broadcast on a giant screen traced the capsule's trajectory to Earth.

The pressure was on, not only because of the Columbia disaster, but because this model of Soyuz, the TMA, was new and had never gone through re-entry before.

"Just a little more than three months ago people described that which we do as routine," O'Keefe said. "There is nothing routine about this."

When the announcement of the landing was flashed across the center's main screen shortly after 6 a.m. local time, everyone was elated.

But as minutes ticked by, rescue planes and helicopters dispatched to retrieve the crew could not find the capsule, having lost contact with its radio beacon. Communication with the crew was lost during the descent.

The smiles faded, and so did the conversation. O'Keefe and Koptev sat bolt upright, their attention focused on the giant displays in front of them.

O'Keefe had been through something similar months before: watching mission control in Florida try to reach the seven members of the Columbia crew as their shuttle broke up on re-entry.

More time passed, and the heads of both agencies were ushered out of the room, as were the wives of the American astronauts. Even low-level Russian space agency officials were gone.

Some of the helicopters ran out of fuel and had to return for more before continuing the search.

Finally, after more than two tense hours, mission control announced that a plane had spotted the capsule in Kazakstan and the crew was fine. The room, by now mostly journalists and NASA spokespeople, erupted into applause.

"Everything worked," U.S. astronaut Kenneth Bowersox, smiling broadly, declared in good Russian to reporters. "Soyuz is very reliable. It worked just like it was supposed to. The landing was actually pretty great."

U.S. astronaut Donald Pettit was reported to be feeling weak and nauseated after landing, not surprising given the effects of nearly six months of weightlessness followed by the sharp descent. Russian astronaut Nikolai Budarin, the flight commander, was described by a Russian space official as being "in perfect shape."

The three men, who had been aboard the space station since Nov. 25, returned to Moscow on Sunday evening and were taken to the space training center, Star City, where they will undergo two weeks of medical tests and debriefings with officials from NASA and the Russian space program.

As the descent began, the three-man crew expected a routine landing, but then realized that they would touch down far short of their target, Bowersox said.

"When we saw the signs on the displays, our eyes got very wide," he said.

Russian officials said an investigating commission will examine all possible explanations, including technical failure and human error by the crew or at Mission Control.

"This capsule has a lot of new equipment and has never landed before," said Alexander Serebro, a former Russian astronaut. "I don't think the Americans should be seriously scared and concerned about what happened. They have no choice anyway but to wait for the Russians to find out the reasons and improve the performance."

How well the Soyuz functions is a critical question for more than a dozen countries involved in the space station, a $100-billion project that will take years to complete.

Since the United States grounded its shuttle fleet after the loss of the Columbia crew Feb. 1, the Soyuz has become the sole lifeline to the station as it orbits 240 miles above the Earth. Without the Soyuz, space officials would be forced to leave the station unmanned, a risky alternative that could lead to its loss.

NASA and Russian space officials said Sunday that what matters is that the crew touched down safely.

"There is no sense in overdramatizing the situation," Koptev told Itar-Tass, a Russian news agency. "The main thing in our work is a happy ending."

- Information from the Associated Press, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and New York Times was used in this report.

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