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Soyuz Capsule Return Marred By Mystery Communications Blackout
astroengine writes "An unexplained communications loss left flight controllers unable to speak with three space station crew returning to Earth over Kazakhstan during the last 15 minutes of their descent Thursday night. The first indication that the capsule survived its fiery plunge through the atmosphere was a series of beeps signaling components of the Soyuz had been jettisoned as planned. Later, ground controllers picked up signals that the Soyuz's parachutes had deployed, but it wasn't until a Russian recovery aircraft established two-way radio communications with the crew that flight controllers knew all was well."
They should make sure to check the crew's DNA very carefully and make sure they're still human. A lot of really bad things in the movies have started exactly like this.
In other news, my LightSquared broadband is working great!
Only by accident. If that third stage failure had a soyuz carrying astronauts in it, they'd all be dead. Same is true for a half dozen other incidents at least - soyuz TMA-11, Soyuz TMA-1, June 1997 a module of the mir space station was punctured and depressurized during a mid space collision between mir, spektr, and progress, etc etc. The US suffered some catastrophic tragedies with Columbia and Challenger, losing 7 astronauts per incident. It doesn't mean soviet engineering is at all better.