Crew that landed on Saturday was in grave danger, news agency says
By MARK K. MATTHEWS and ROBERT BLOCK

McClatchy-Tribune
WASHINGTON — Whatever caused a Soyuz capsule to fall to earth like a rock on Saturday, scaring its crew of three and space enthusiasts around the world, has got NASA and its Russian engineers stumped.

There was smoke inside the Russian-built space capsule as it plummeted to earth. The crew of three — including U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson — were tossed around in their seats, squeezed by a force of up to 10 times gravity. And they hit the ground hard, at least 260 miles off course.

They were, according to the Russian news agency Interfax, in mortal danger. The agency quoted an unidentified space official as saying part of the spacecraft had failed to separate from the crew capsule, meaning it entered the atmosphere with a hatch rather than its heat shield leading the way.
But as engineers on both sides of the world look for answers, one thing is clear: The ship that NASA is relying on to ferry astronauts to space after the shuttle retires has a serious problem — bad enough, critics say, that NASA should reconsider its plans for human spaceflight after 2010.

"If a problem occurs with the Soyuz, we are in big, big trouble," said Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., a leading critic of NASA's plans to rely on the Russians and the sponsor of a bill to keep the shuttle fleet flying beyond 2010.

NASA plans to pay Russia to ferry American astronauts to the international space station until at least 2015, when the agency hopes to launch the shuttle's successor.

The foundation of the plan is the Soyuz, a capsule with almost 90 consecutive safe landings over a 34-year period. Apollo 15 was in use by the U.S. the last time there was a Soyuz fatality.

What is perplexing engineers now is the cause of a second straight steep descent through the Earth's atmosphere at an angle of more than 30 degrees, an approach known as a "ballistic" re-entry.

Soyuz automatically makes a ballistic re-entry if its guidance systems fail.

"It's clearly something that should not have occurred," NASA associate administrator Bill Gerstenmaier told a news conference Tuesday in Washington.

The last Soyuz return, which carried two cosmonauts and a Malaysian space tourist, also made a ballistic re-entry in October 2007.