Oct 27 2003
From The Space Library
At 8:47 p.m. (EST), Soyuz TMA-2 landed safely in the steppes of Kazakhstan, returning to Earth the ISS Expedition 7 crew, American astronaut Edward T. Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri I. Malenchenko. Spanish astronaut Pedro Duque of ESA was also aboard the flight, returning from a 10-day mission performing scientific experiments in the ISS lab. The Soyuz TMA-2 flight was equipped with a GPS and satellite phones, which NASA had donated to prevent a disruption in communications between the crew and Mission Control Center in Moscow. Such a disruption had occurred in May 2003, when a Soyuz craft returning from the ISS had landed 250 miles (402.3 kilometers) off course because of a computer malfunction. (Mara D. Bellaby of Associated Press, “Soyuz Crew Safely Returns to Earth from Space Station,” 27 October 2003.
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