A: Kedves Ildiko, szivbol koszontom, nagyon orultem hogy edesanyjaval roviden talalkozhattam a kollegiumban. Remelem hogy talalkozhatunk a jovoben es beszelgethetunk az Edesapjarol.

I am so glad that I took the time this morning to write down and e-mail my impressions of what the day is going to be like so that it could be published. The reality followed the expectations very closely. This sounds boring, but in fact, this reflects a certain encouraging maturity in the space enterprise.

In the last hours I am scrambling a little bit. I make some video recordings talking about how I feel: I am very sad that I’m leaving the station, leaving weightlessness. But I fail to record something that may be silly or may be important: how it looks when one “collapses” in weightlessness. On Earth, doing an imitation of fainting is a skill that is taught in drama schools. In weightlessness, one can simply cease to care and let go of practically all muscles, as if one fainted. I did it many times, always with the same result: my hands came up in front of me as if I was holding an invisible ball. My legs also lifted up a little, with the knees slightly bent. Michael LA also tried it; his arms did the same, but his legs rose less. We wondered if it was because of his long acclimatization to weightlessness. I forget completely about taking a picture of this phenomenon in the rush. But Suni is helping by taking pictures of me in the American Lab and Node posing in front of the flags of the countries participating of the ISS project, or doing gymnastics that would be of stunt quality if done on Earth. Unfortunately, the stuff I am taking back to Earth has been packed for two days, so there is no way to do last-minute ideas combining US and Hungarian flags, displaying patches, and the like. The moral is that everything has to be planned carefully, which it was, but there is little room for spontaneous ideas.

The station crew is very busy packing the living compartment with garbage. Some of the waste containers started to smell a little bit, and it was decided that they should not wait for the return of the Progress freighter, but that we should take them. So it is the first time that I had a faint whiff of garbage on the station. I reflect on all the KTOs (containers of solid waste, in Russian) that are lined up to be packed into our living compartment so that they will later burn up, gleaming in silver aluminum with solid bolts and seals and could, for all I know, serve in a movie as vessels of kryptonite or the dilithium crystals of Star Trek, but I know better what’s inside them.

We give away our last belongings that we can’t take back but do not want to throw away. Mike still has some fine food from his bonus pack. I give my official Advils to Suni (these are American headache pills, but Oleg also liked them).

I eat a light lunch. We get the first of three doses of salt pills that will help us retain fluids for the return. John Glenn warned me about these in our latest conversation. He said: “Take as much as they require, but definitely not more!” Just as the weightlessness caused a loss of fluids and a redistribution of what remained into the upper body and head, returning to Earth will require replacing the fluid loss and slowing the counter-revolutionary fluid displacement back into our legs, hence the corsets called “Kentavr” (Centaur).

The TV is turned on, and we do one more PAO (public affairs operation) saying good-byes. I get to hug Suni and shake hands all around.

Misha Tyurin briefs me on the timeline. As the time of the hatch closure nears, I get to start dressing in the space station so as to save time in the spacecraft. I start with the now-infamous diapers, which I wore once but did not use during the launch. On the way down we are supposed to “load up” with water, so diapers seem like a prudent precaution in case the salt pills do not work, just like they put my mind at ease during the trip to orbit. Next comes the three-piece Kentavr corset: one piece is like cutoff jeans, and the other two wrap the feet like shin guards. There is plenty of lacing, and Fyodor and Oleg decide how much they should be tightened. On my chest comes the medical “belt,” which contains sensors for temperature, breathing rate, and a three-point ECG. I put on the two-piece long underwear in brilliant turquoise, which is an occasion for a bit of ribbing by the others, but I do not care, because soon they will look the same. We need to cut a hole into the upper part of the underwear for the medical wires to come through; later I will be happy to have this marking that identifies the original article that I flew in. The white underwear I came up in had this hole already sewn in, but this underwear is produced by a different organization. Go figure.

I say quiet good-byes to Fyodor and Oleg. Oleg tells me how much he enjoyed flying with me, and I certainly felt the same. We remind each other of the planned reunions in December for the TMA-10 crew and in summer of ‘08 for everyone.

The time has arrived. We are ready to close the hatch. I go in first as the token turquoise, carrying a small, flat package with the last tapes and photo chips to be placed into the pocket of the space suit. Misha and Michael follow in their station clothes, which can be abandoned later. The hatch is closed with six turns of the special wrench, and now we are independent of the station but will stay physically connected by the steel hooks until everything can be verified. Meanwhile, down in the return capsule, I comfortably check all my belts and connections that always vexed me during training so that they are all clearly laid out. I stow the package that will go into my space suit pocket in a niche temporarily, and I set my watch to Moscow Statute Time (MDV), which is Moscow time except for the daylight savings bit, and which is the time we use in the Soyuz.

The long pole in the schedule tent is the verification of the pressure integrity of the spacecraft, which takes about 30 minutes. The plan is to dress me up in the space suit while this check is going on and deposit me in my seat first, while they can work in shirtsleeves and dress at the end of the 90-minute orbit. This is fine with me, since I am comfortable in the space suit—not all people are—and this way I will have a lot of time adjusting my seat belts, which are very important for a pleasant landing.

Getting on the space suit in zero G is so easy when you have help. I simply float, contort my body as needed, and it’s done. What a change from the difficult training in the weightless parabolic flight! I float down into the descent capsule, no sweat, and get ensconced in my seat where I will be staying until the landing. Misha helps me by checking all the connections and then goes back to his busy tasks. I am out of their hair. I check everything carefully and try to tighten every one of the six belts. Then I loosen them so that I am comfortable and can see more. I am happy with the seat liner; my being possibly taller did not affect the fit, although I do need to wiggle a little bit to find the exact place around my helmet and shoulders. As I float up a few inches, I survey the view through my window. I see the trusses and solar panels that I first saw on our arrival. Since my view is to the side and we are docked to the station from below, like a pilot fish on a shark, I cannot see the station body, just what hangs from it. I can also see the changes in light as the station is moving from light to shadow. I understand how lucky I was that I got my first glimpse of the station 12 days ago at this magic moment of sunset where the colors are the most intense.

Meanwhile, Michael has dressed and joins me in the capsule. He is taller than I and, although trim, has a bigger frame. It is not easy for him to squeeze through. Also, I, being already attached and on the opposite side, cannot help him. The ground starts being nervous about the timeline and is asking questions. We are in constant communications with Moscow center because even though the Soyuz has only the shorter-range (”line of sight”) UHF radios, the station can serve as a relay, and will do until the very last stages of the reentry—our return orbit will not take us away from the view of the station. I’ll explain this later.

Misha is still up in the living compartment getting ready, and Michael is handling the comm. He has an excellent command of Russian and patiently explains the situation. Finally Misha comes down, closes the hatch above us that separates us from the living compartment, and attaches the hoses hastily. The hatch above us will become the outer hatch once the living compartment is jettisoned, so its integrity has to be checked, which we will do next. Misha asks me to hold onto the onboard documentation books for the flight since all the other crannies are already full of stuff that we are returning to Earth. I am happy to help and guard the books that are always trying to get away from me like a bunch of cats. Misha suggests I hold them like a baby in my arms so they won’t hit anyone when the later violent reentry events come. I am a little apprehensive, but one way to look at it is that the g loads cannot be so bad if Misha trusts me with holding a small library during reentry.

We run through the space suit pressure integrity checks. We don the gloves. Close the visor—two clicks. Michael opens the valve to pressurize the suit. Misha’s suit is not pressurizing at all, but he tells us to continue with the checks. We complete the check, calling out .1 and .35 atmosphere pressures inside the suit, then deflate the suits and open the visors. Misha checks his connections, finds a kink in his oxygen hose, and repeats the test. He passes, which is good because only two tests are allowed; otherwise, way too much oxygen, which is used for testing, would get into our cabin atmosphere. As it is, we already have red lights on the control panel warning us of the elevated levels. I am just glad it was not my suit that had the problem.

We are ready for the descent capsule hatch pressure integrity check. I’ve done this test in the simulator myself, so I know what is going on. We start to depressurize the living compartment, watch its pressure, and at 550 mm mercury pressure, we issue the command to close the valve. By the time the slowly operating electrical valve is fully closed, the pressure will be at 500 mm, which is optimal for the test. If the seal not right, air will move from the capsule, which is at the normal 760 mm, to the other side, where the pressure is lower, and we would notice this. So Misha starts the procedure by opening a depressurization valve. Soon the time comes for closing the valve, and the valve does not close. The pressure keeps dropping. The command is issued again. The pressure keeps dropping. It is 300 mm now.

I mentally review what I know about this hatch. It has a peculiarity: if the pressure is low in the return capsule but high in the living compartment, it may deform—this is an important point one has to keep in mind in case of fire, for example, when the return capsule has to be depressurized. But now the situation is reversed. With the low pressure on the other side, the hatch will hold—if it has integrity, which is not proven yet—but there are no hissing noises or ear pops that would indicate a leak of air from the descent capsule into the now partially depressurized living compartment. Nor is there an additional red light that would say “давление падает” or “pressure drop” in addition to the “состав воздуха” or “air composition fault” red light that is already aglow from the suit checks. We have proven space suits that would save us in any situation. Clearly we have our first off-nominal situation of the flight, but there is no immediate danger. However, the pressure in the living compartment is still dropping.

Suddenly, in the midst of all the activity, the pressure drop stops at around 250 mm. The valve finally closes. The leak check can continue. We will measure any drop in the pressure in the descent capsule that might be caused by a failure of the double seal in the hatch, just like we checked the seal in the hatch between the living compartment and the space station earlier. Remember, there is no evidence of anything being wrong with the hatch. The problem we ran into was in the preparation for this leak check. But what are the consequences of this off-nominal low pressure in the living compartment? The documentation clearly states: “Do not lower pressure below 500 mm.” I speculate that it has to do with the possible use of the living compartment as a temporary refuge in case there were other problems during reentry—just like the Lunar Module was used as a lifeboat in Apollo 13. Using the resources of the living compartment, we could survive for two additional days while reentry problems could be ironed out. When the valve did not close this time, we were losing pressure, which is spare air that might be needed in such an emergency; that is why the concern about the pressure: we want it to be lower than normal so a leak check can work, but not too low so that we have ample air resources left. The ground chatter confirms my suspicion because they are organizing a refill of the living compartment with air from the station. They are talking to the station crew now and ask Fyodor, the commander, to bring a portable pressure gauge with him to the station hatch that we earlier closed and to briefly open a pressure-equalizing valve so that station air could start replenishing the living compartment.

Fyodor gets the idea right away, and he is ready to try cautiously so that we can get an idea about the air flow rates first. I do not think that this procedure was tried before, but all three parties—ground, spacecraft, station—understand their situation and roles and proceed to act so as to maybe make things better and definitely not make them worse. Is this improvisation, or the straightforward application of a very transparent and robust system to fix a simple problem? I cannot tell, but I am comfortable with Fyodor’s cautious small opening of the pressure-equalizing valve first and monitoring the pressure change. We have plenty of time in any case because the planned leak check can proceed in parallel—it is not disturbed by the low pressure; if anything, it is enhanced: the seal has to stand up to a greater-than-planned pressure differential. Once the small manual valve opening works, the time is cautiously expanded, and soon we have more than the 500 mm required in the living compartment at the cost of the station’s air pressure being reduced by 2 mm! This gives us an idea of the relative volumes of the station versus the living compartment: the station is about 100 times greater (500-250 mm divided by roughly 2 mm).

With all the checks done, we gratefully thank the station for the refill and start the automatic undocking process. Small electric motors through reduction gears and levers start the slow opening of the seven steel hooks that connect us to the station. What would happen if we could not undock? There is a backup procedure that uses explosive bolts to let go of the hooks—but this would render the docking port unusable and was never needed in the history of the program. The TV display shows us a crude image of the immobile docking port. After a couple of minutes there is the slightest wiggle on the screen, a green light that shows the docking contact goes out, a click, and we are on our way, driven by three strong springs that give us a bit of a push. The theatrical scenery of the trusses and solar panels is slowly passing by. It is going to be a long opera; there will be some boring bits before the fat lady sings. We coast for about 100 yards (100 meters), and then the small backward rockets that are just under my window fire, spitting star-like splatters of fuel residue every which way. I can see why it is a good idea to get to a decent distance first; it is not that these rockets are powerful—you can barely feel their thrust—but they could easily dirty up the windows and solar panels of the station.

Six minutes later, when the station is barely visible on the screen, the spacecraft turns and there is a longer, 30-second forward burn of the small engines to get us away from the station in a safe orbit starting behind and a little bit higher than the station. Because we are pushed to a higher orbit by the forward burn, we get further and further behind the station (remember how a runner running on an outer track in a curve would get behind the others even if he ran a wee bit faster?). The next orbit is spent with preparations of the computer systems. The old-fashioned but reliable machines, some running complex emulators, transfer dozens of numbers in tens of seconds, which is very interesting to watch. More modern computers do so much more in so little time that watching what they are doing is impossible; one simply has to hope that everything is fine. Slowly, one by one, all the transfers and tests complete. Mike hands out the remaining salt tablets and water packages—time to load up with fluids. We are nearing the time of the reentry burn. Misha carefully tests and reports our orientation through the periscope visor. The ground track is straight and the ground moves in the right direction—that is, backwards. The visor is a little like a bombsight and shows the features on the ground moving by very fast. But the purpose is just to check our orientation, so we simply pick up any feature—a cloud, or a lakeshore—and watch it move through the frosted glass screen on which the image is optically projected—no fancy electronics here. A point will pass through the 8 inch (20 cm) circular screen in about 2 seconds. If it moves along the hairlines etched into the glass, all is fine. If not, our orientation needs to be adjusted.

We are quite a bit behind the station now, but still within its line of sight, so our communication is fine. Less than one minute before the burn, the door protecting the engine opens. At the appointed time, the burn starts—with a smaller bang than on my first spacecraft—and we monitor the progress. I keep dropping my pencil to see how much we accelerate, it is very little. The accumulated speed slowly rises on the display. We need the 115.2 meters per second to get to our target area. Of course, this is the amount by which we slow down, but never mind; we can call it speed, or impulse, or we can call it delta-vee, which is change (delta) in velocity (v), as long as it gets us there. Misha calls out the various displays monitoring the fuel consumption and the fuel pressures—all indicating the general health of the engine. As various mileposts are passed in the burn, they are noted. There are many possible emergencies and many ways to recover from them. I’ve seen several in the simulator—short burns, long burns. But this one is for real, and the СКД engine works perfectly. The number I was staring at shows 115.3 at shutdown; the .1 m/sec difference, I later learn, was nominal. Now we are in an orbit that will cut below the station and intersect the Earth’s surface at our landing area in Kazakhstan. As we get slower and lower, we will start overtaking the station because now we are flying below it in a tighter circle.

The next interesting event is about 15 minutes away: the separation of the three parts of the spacecraft. The spacecraft retains its inertial orientation after the burn, and as we go around the Earth, it looks like we turn with respect to the Earth’s surface. After half an orbit, we will be going forward. If you do not believe me, take a stubby pencil with an eraser around a globe. Point the eraser in the direction to its path—that is the braking burn. Now continue to go around the Earth, but the pencil should remain in the same position relative to the room—which represents the “inertial” space in which gyros and the like live. By the time you arrive on the other side, the pencil tip will point in the direction of the orbit, and the eraser will be opposite to it. Now you get a small taste of relativity.

Inside the cabin we just look around in wonder. We are getting lower and lower, and the features that we see move seemingly faster and faster. Since our arrival to Earth—one way or another—is now assured by our orbital path, we can release the precious reserve air from the living compartment so that it won’t complicate the separation—we do not want the car-sized living compartment to run around wildly after separation like when you let go of an inflated toy balloon and it goes “pffft…” This way the air actually leaves through a special two-sided nozzle so that it does not create a net push.

The moment of separation in our automatic reentry mode is determined by a precise time. Six minutes before, I unstow the reentry hand controller and hand it to Misha. We all close our helmet visors to assure an added level of safety and to look very cool. I leave my glasses off so I will be more comfortable. I won’t be writing notes because my hands are full, and I can see the key numbers, although not all, without glasses. At the appointed moment there is the sharp sound of the explosives cutting through metal and various lights and displays announce the return capsule’s sudden independence. We are now on the internal oxygen, the internal batteries, the internal stabilization, the internal carbon-dioxide scrubbers, down to the wire.

Looking outside my window, I notice a large 1 by 3 foot (30 cm by 1 m) panel of black insulation cloth torn free by the separation flapping outside of my window. Yes—floating free, but also flapping back and forth like a sail in a stately way, at one point even coming into contact with the skin of the spacecraft not far from the window, and I can hear and feel the impact. Then it is grabbed by some unseen force and disappears behind. We are not in deep space anymore. There is some miniscule amount of air, that at our speed of 5 miles a second—Mach 25—can push on pieces of debris, and probably soon we will feel the push, too. We are also facing forward because the debris disappeared to the back. I can also see the ground go by very fast and seemingly very close, scenes from the Arabian peninsula. All of this is a little disconcerting because our main heat shield is behind us—we should start turning around soon so that the heat shield will face the wind.

But I should not really worry about this because I know that the capsule is designed with its center of gravity so that it will right itself naturally and remain stable in its correct orientation. All the careful measurements of our centers of gravity (mine was near my stomach, if you remember) and the placement of the returned freight near the center of gravity are all paying off now. The spacecraft is slowly assuming the correct position with heat shield forward.

We do not feel g-forces yet, but the superthin air around the spacecraft as it is compressed by the spacecraft body is turning into superhot plasma. There is so little air here that the heat is negligible even though the temperature is very high. To me, plasma looks like a pinkish glow outside the windows that obscures the view. We seem to be immersed in a sea of Pepto-Bismol.

Now the G meter on the screen starts to climb. Outside, the pink is replaced by a more transparent smoke and occasional balls of fire like the breath of a monster in a very cheap Godzilla movie. I have the impression that we are going steeper; it must be an illusion from the attitude of the spacecraft that is starting to generate some lifting force which we can use for steering our path.

At .5 g’s I am starting to be impressed—I feel like I am back at normal gravity—but what if it keeps climbing? At 1 g, I feel a real push like I remember for 2 g’s. As the g’s rise, so does the lift and the computer’s ability to control our path. This is done through rolling the spacecraft so that its angled position pushes the flight path to the right or to the left, just like a downhill skier turns by rolling the skis slightly. The sound I hear is exactly like the swishing sound of skis—is it the hypersonic air rushing by, or is it the hissing of the nozzles that control our rolling and use superheated steam from concentrated hydrogen peroxide? We turn more back and forth when we are high on the return curve that is shown on the screen and turn less when we are low. I’ve done it manually in the simulator, but it is also good to be just an observer—I observe Misha observing the system to see if he needs to take over.

All is running nominally. The g’s continue to climb. I use the tummy breathing technique I learned in the centrifuge. I do not feel any of the “lump in the throat” illusion I was warned about. The g’s level out just under 4, less than expected, and they do not feel excessive despite the initial impression of the change from weightlessness. The fire outside continues unabated. Inside, we do not feel the heat except that the windows start glowing reddish and then they turn black starting at their bottom edge like you would see a sheet of paper turning black in a fireplace. Soon we are sitting as if night had suddenly descended on us. But this was just the outside pane of the triple window. And most of the heat is carried away by the air itself even before it has a chance of heating the capsule—we are truly air-cooled; the high temperatures just singe the spacecraft body and the windows, but they do not really heat us up.

In about five minutes the g’s slowly come down again. I am hanging onto the library that was entrusted to me. I fiddle with my seatbelts to get them tighter. But before everything quiets down, and before I can check the timing for the next event, I feel the tremendous jerk of the parachute system opening. I focus on some small detail on the instrument panel ahead of me, as I was told to, and remember how we are now hanging by a roller bearing at the end of the parachute line. But there is not that much rotation or swinging; soon the progressively softer jerks announce the opening of the braking and main parachutes. I manage to hang onto my books. The risers of the parachute also serve as an antenna—Misha can now make contact with the rescue forces and gives a very complete report according to the set schema: the crew is well (he asks us first), the exact times when the key events like separation actually occurred, the accumulated impulse (the 115.2 that everybody is looking for), and the method of reentry, which is automatic on the digital “tight-cycle” system. This lets the ground draw all the conclusions and properly prepare for our reception.

Four minutes later we are at 15,000 ft (5 km) altitude. A bunch of the remaining pyrotechnics fire—the spacecraft must have started with hundreds of these explosive squibs that are working so well and do so many different tasks in this most unusual manner. We drop the heat shield to expose the soft-landing rockets and the gamma-ray (which is to say radioactive) altimeters in the base of the spacecraft. The burnt-up outer panes of the windows are yanked off by a steel cable that connects them to the head shield. The suspension of the main parachutes is changed from the side of the spacecraft, where the parachute container is, to a symmetric suspension so that we will hit the ground upright. Far from being violent as we were warned, this “rehooking” maneuver lets us fall free for an instant and thus reminds us of the wonderful feeling of weightlessness that we left not so long ago and which we will miss so much. The remaining peroxide is vented so that the spacecraft will be not dangerous on the ground. Vents are opened to the outside air that is still a little thin for the taste of the responsible air-checking instruments, and because they do not know that we are almost home, red lights start flashing again. Finally, our seats are raised into their landing position, just as we saw it in the factory fit checks, except that the pyrotechnics here are a little firmer than the compressed air was in the factory.

With sun shining through the now clear windows, and in radio contact with the recovery helicopters, the remaining eight minutes go very fast. Misha reminds us to keep our mouths shut—so as to protect our tongues—and I work on my belts for the last time and wiggle myself as deep and as comfortable in the liner as I can. The unusually heavy feeling of gravity here helps a lot. Sightseeing is not an option. I embrace my books and hang onto the comm stalk between my knees that is designed for this purpose so that our hands won’t flail. I am as ready for impact as I ever will be. The helicopter pilot who is pursuing us and has us in his sight is calling out our altitude above ground. When he says 100 meters, I start counting in my head and clench my teeth lightly. We should be sinking 10 meters a second. At eight I see the yellow (not green) посадка light come up, and almost immediately feel a single substantial crash. I know that at three feet (80 cm) altitude the gamma rays emitted from a radioactive substance in the “Kaktus-2″ altimeter units reflected from the ground and triggered the “soft-landing rockets,” really just explosives that softened our impact. This system was originally designed for airdrops of military equipment, and as such it achieved a high volume and high reliability. It is also very dangerous if not approached with proper caution.

I feel no aftereffects, no pain. My vision is clear. I still have the books. Now the spacecraft trips on its side, being dragged by the parachute on the ground. As we slide, what seems like quite a distance, the body of the spacecraft rotates, and I wind up hanging sideways. At this point, I lose the books as they escape from my embrace under my chin as we turn. Finally, all movement stops.

I survey the situation. My left arm is very heavy when I let go of the stalk and let it hang. Otherwise, I feel fine, and the rescuers are just minutes away, judging from the last helicopter report. I can breathe well—I was warned that there might be a problem there—and I see that we are opening the faceplates, so I open mine as planned. My comrades are uncharacteristically quiet and inactive. We are all hanging sideways, with Mike on the bottom, Misha in the middle, and me on the top. Mike is buried under a few lose books and also under the reentry hand controller. He makes no motion to clean up the mess but does not seem to be injured. Misha is very quiet. Given that there is no emergency and the rescue forces are close by, we all need to keep our seat belts on tight until otherwise commanded, so there is nothing for me to do. But I am puzzled. Is my commander all right? Is my flight engineer all right? The mood seems to have changed in the capsule from all business to deep fatigue during the last few minutes as I was focusing on my getting settled in the seat. There seems to be something about returning from a long-term spaceflight that saps even the strongest people. I think to myself, if this was an unscheduled landing in a hostile environment, being out in the rain wearing socks, as I was during the exercise, would be the least of my problems. I feel guilt like a soldier in battle who is not injured while his teammates are.

The rescue team is around the spacecraft now; I can hear them speaking through the spacecraft wall, but I can understand only fragments. They are waiting for our last antenna to deploy by yet another explosive pyrotechnic device. This happens by default eight minutes after landing. Isn’t there a command we can give to deploy it earlier? Isn’t this in our checklist? I do not know the exact answer without the manuals, and it is easier just to wait than to bother my crewmates with what is just curiosity. Sure enough, we soon hear the explosion of the squib, and then feel the spacecraft being rolled a bit so that we are now with the head down. This sounds uncomfortable, but we were briefed about it during training, and it makes sense for the coming extraction—this is why we were to keep the seat belts on tight. Soon we hear the noise of the hatch being opened, and a curious soldier’s face appears. He is pulled back by our official paparazzo, who quickly takes a bunch of photographs through the tunnel. Then the paparazzo is pulled back by our doctor, who takes a look and tells us that Misha is to go first, then me, and then Mike. I signal Mike that I could stay behind if he wanted out first, but he declines. I watch as the ground crew loosens Misha’s belts and contacts, which puts Misha squarely on the top of the hatch which opened inwards and below the seat that is on the top of the capsule. So Misha can simply slide or crawl forward on his belly and be pulled out the tunnel by the doctors outside. When my turn comes, it is all very simple; we undo the connections, and I crawl on the shiny cover of the hatch—which, by the way, doubled as a UHF antenna when the hatch was closed—to the outside. I grin giddily as the doctors get me and hand-carry me to the lounge chair set up a few steps away. The chair is covered with fine furs. The doctors calm me constantly: easy, slowly, carefully, do not move, keep still.

As I am placed in the chair, I am becoming aware of a number of things. The weather is wonderful; the sun is still shining. It is about an hour from sunset. I take off my headphones, which makes me feel better. I still feel very heavy, and I have a few vestibular illusions, the most pronounced of which is called—as I later learn—the “tilt translation.” When I nod, I get the impression of my whole body moving back and forth. When I turn my head from side to side, I get dizzy. No problem, I can just listen to the doctors and keep my head stiff and still. My poor vestibular system, having finally adjusted to the signals of weightlessness, is now facing a completely different environment that it has to relearn. I can see how it would be much worse for my comrades, who adapted to a much longer period of weightlessness.

A few feet from the chair, behind a makeshift cordon, is what looks like a big throng of various people, some in uniforms, some in lab coats, and some with cameras—50? 100? Where did they come from? Only 15 minutes ago, this was an empty desert landing site.

A nurse offers me an apple. I munch on it eagerly, even though it is a little mushy, but after two bites the nurse says “enough” and takes it away. I manage to get it back a little later. My support team is there; Anousheh Ansari is there to see her original crew, Misha and Mike; and there are reporters only a few feet away asking questions. I feel chatty and enthuse away in English and Hungarian, but I won’t turn my head. My doctor slips an instrument on my index finger that gives him my main vital signs—they are all fine.

We pose for pictures, with the doctors sometimes shooing people away or themselves posing with us or taking pictures. Misha and Mike seem to be doing fine. We are grabbed by the doctors and nurses and carried into a large inflatable tent that appeared in the meanwhile. We are placed on cots. After a little rest, it is time to take off the space suit, which is ordinarily no big deal except that it necessarily involves some head movement. I get a lot of help, and slowly I am out of the space suit at the cost of getting a little dizzy. Now they can take a look at me. My blood pressure is fine. There are no marks on my back—I am happy to hear that, and it confirms my impression that the seat protected me well during landing. I get into a flight suit. I take a few steps within the tent but prudently let myself be carried to the next station: an impressive all-terrain vehicle of obvious military heritage, with another cot inside that will take me to the helicopter nearby. There I get to chat with the pilot a little bit; the helicopter is a Mil-8. I am happy to hear that it has two engines. I ask the pilot to take us on a scenic flight around the landing site, but alas, that is not to be. I realize how little I saw of the spacecraft and of the process and resolve to come to the landing of Oleg and Fyodor in October. By now the crew is separated; we all have our own helicopters, which seems like a luxury, but in fact, all the helicopters are full of personnel and material that support the recovery. I get a nice cot in the helicopter and get to sign the wall next to the signatures of other cosmonauts. I am very comfortable with a survival jacket over me as a blanket. When we take off, I glimpse for an instant what is on the ground, but it is almost dark now, and I happily fall asleep for the 90-minute flight to Karaganda.

When I wake up, we are practically at the airport. We land in helicopter fashion and transfer by car to the main terminal where a throng of journalists is waiting. I am reunited with the crew and whisked into some back office. This is a great opportunity to go to the toilet finally, and with my doctor standing guard outside, I get to sit down. Standing is still discouraged—we do not yet have “orthostatic tolerance.”

There is the first of many press conferences. We are first given traditional Kazakh hats that are unlike any other hats I’ve ever seen and then asked the questions. I had some nice Hungarian quotes ready for the Hungarian media that followed the trip. We get gifts, books, and a golden reproduction of the symbol of Karaganda: a miner holding a giant lump of coal. When the conference is finished, it is nice getting back into the familiar cosmonaut’s jet on which we came down to Baikonur two weeks ago. We are flying home to Star City. On board I have my own cabin and cot. I grab a little food and get a bottle of cold beer, plus a taste of the Hungarian digestive Unicum whose delivery was specially organized by General Korzun.

Before going to bed, I have to move a video camera to make room. It is identical to the camera I used in space for the last two weeks. I am astonished by its weight; first I think I am a victim of a practical joke. I inspect it; there are no tricks. Things are just very heavy on Earth. But stretching out on the cot, I feel very relaxed. While weightless sleep was very nice, there is also something to be said for gravity, and in space I sometimes missed the feeling where at least one half of your body is relaxed—the half away from the surface of the bed—and you can change which half by turning. In space, the minute tension that you experience in your body in all directions never seems to go away; this is not unpleasant, just different. But now I can compare these sensations and fall into a very pleasant sleep all the way to Moscow.

It is 2 a.m. when we arrive, but there are a lot of people waiting, including my brother. We are led down the air stairs by our minders arm-in-arm. At the bottom, a small pandemonium, flowers, pictures, a few steps to our autobus. The ride from the air base to Star City is very quick with no traffic. At the entrance of the “profi” where we live, we have a military band, and the girls with the bread and salt welcome us, just like what I saw when Anousheh and her return crew arrived last September. The unusual hour puts a little damper on the festivities, and soon I am in my new room downstairs with lots of unopened baggage from my old room upstairs in the same building and from my room in Baikonur—it was certainly a complex trip even just with respect to my luggage. My crewmates are in the next rooms, and we get our orders for the next day: the doctors are coming starting at 8 a.m. I’ve already slept about three good hours, and I am ready to continue. I sit in the bathtub—standing is still not an option—and use the hand shower and then hit the bed. I am a very happy camper back on Earth.