In NASA lingo, events that go as expected are "nominal." And in space, you really want things to be nominal. But in April, astronaut Peggy Whitson had a ride home from the International Space Station that was anything but. Her Soyuz descent module failed to separate properly, forcing it into a ballistic path— a fast, steep entry that caused the craft to miss the landing site by 295 miles. We asked her what it was like.
Wired: Can you describe the descent?
Whitson: We did the predicted deorbit burn. Then we separated from the other modules. That's done with pyros— explosive bolt releases— and you can hear it, because they're up against the vehicle.
Wired: When did you know something was wrong?
Whitson: Right after that. I looked out my window and saw part of the module's cover floating about a meter away. I asked Yuri Malenchenko, the Soyuz commander, "Hey, is that normal?"
Wired: Nice. Then what happened?
Whitson: We started noticing some unusual motion. I felt like I was being thrown into my seat, but it's hard to tell— your sensations after six months of zero gravity are pretty questionable. Then the automatic system commanded a ballistic entry, and the gs started building up very quickly. I saw 8.2 gs on the meter.
Wired: Were you scared?
Whitson: No. I was too busy to be scared. I knew what was happening was not strictly nominal, but we train for these scenarios.
Wired: Uh-huh. You astronauts always say that.
Whitson: Sorry. I guess it's a cliche, but it's true. Of course, there's not much you can do in 8 gs. But that was probably a minute or less, and then it dropped to 4.5 gs and we could breathe again. Then we felt the big yank of the parachute deploying.
Wired: Again, scary.
Whitson: Oh, we also had smoke coming from under the control panel, so we shut it off. That meant we had no altitude data aside from a less reliable wrist gauge and looking out the window.
Wired: And the actual touchdown?
Whitson: We bounced about 10 meters and rolled. When we stopped, I was on top, hanging in my seat.
Wired: Which is when you got out of the capsule?
Whitson: Well, when Yuri opened the hatch there was a grass fire outside, so we recommended he close the hatch for a little bit. It was desert grass, so it burned out relatively quickly. And then we managed to crawl out.
Wired: Any landing you can crawl away from is a good one, I guess.
Whitson: Obviously it wasn't totally nominal.
