06/20/2016

Soyuz TMA-19M Spacecraft Safely Returns back to Earth Expedition 47 Space Crew after 186-day Space Flight

Three Optolink's TRS-500 fiber-optic gyroscopes, installed into control system of Descent Module of Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft, successfully executed their mission during landing. Three International Space Station crew members,  Commander Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and Flight Engineers ESA astronaut Tim Peake and NASA astronaut Tim Kopra, , descending on board Russia's Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft, safely soft-landed on Saturday, 18 June at 5:15 a.m. EDT (0915 GMT; 3:15 p.m. local time) on the Kazakh steppes, 148 kilometers from the town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan after nearly 186 day space flight. This was Malenchenko's sixth spaceflight , Kopra has now completed his second station mission.  Peake, having landed on his first mission, is the first European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut to fly on behalf of the British government.