Expedition 34 Crew Gets a Foggy Welcome Home

Three members of the Expedition 34 crew undocked from the International Space Station a day later than originally planned on Friday due to bad weather in the landing area in Kazakhstan, but returned safely to Earth, despite continuing cold, foggy weather. The deteriorating weather conditions allowed only two of 12 search and rescue helicopters to land at the touchdown site because of heavy clouds and fog. NASA TV was unable to show the actual landing after the Soyuz capsule descended into the dense fog.

Station Commander Kevin Ford of NASA and Soyuz Commander Evgeny Tarelkin and Flight Engineer Oleg Novitskiy of the Russian Federal
Space Agency undocked their Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft from the space station at 6:43 p.m. CDT and landed northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, at about 10:10 p.m. (9:10 a.m., March 16, Kazakh time). They had been at the station since Oct. 25, 2012, and spent 144 days in space, 142 of which were aboard the ISS.

With the small landing contingent and the cold conditions, the crew were taken quickly to one of the waiting helicopters instead of being whisked inside inflatable medical tent for a check of their condition following landing.

Below are the videos from undocking and the farewells the departing crew said to the remaining crew of new Expedition 35 ISS Commander Chris Hadfield — the first Canadian to serve as station commander — Tom Marshburn of NASA and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko.