ISS International Crew Lands Safely
By Space Coast Daily // May 13, 2013
ABOVE VIDEO: Commander Chris Hadfield has received a lot of media exposure during his time on the International Space Station and ended his time on the station by paying tribute to David Bowie with a rendition of “Space Oddity.”
Commander Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to command the International Space Station, has returned to Earth after almost five months in orbit.
Aboard a Soyuz capsule, Hadfield, along with flight engineers American Tom Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko, undocked from the space station at 7:08 p.m. ET to begin their journey home.
After performing a deorbit burn, the Soyuz stayed on track for the scheduled 10:30 p.m. landing in southern Kazakhstan, wrapping up 146 days in space for the three. The crew members bid farewell to one another and closed the hatches between the two spacecraft at 3:50 p.m.
It marks Hadfield’s first return from space in the Russian capsule — during his previous space missions, in 1995 and 2001, he travelled aboard one of the now retired space shuttles.
FIRST CANADIAN TO WALK IN SPACE
Hadfield was selected to become one of four new Canadian astronauts from a field of 5,330 applicants in June 1992, and is the first Canadian to walk in space.
A former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot, Hadfield has flown two space shuttle missions, STS-74 in 1995 and STS-100 in 2001, and served as capsule communicator for both Space Shuttle and International Space Station expeditions. In December 2012, Hadfield launched in the Soyuz TMA-07M flight for a long duration stay on board the ISS as part of Expedition 35.
He became the first Canadian to command the ISS when the crew of Expedition 34 departed.
