[FPSPACE] Excellent set of Aleksandr Pantyukhin's photos from the TMA-11 landing site

[Igor Lissov]

Geert,

> Still unexplained to me also is why the recovery forces were originally 
> send east (expecting an 'overshoot') while in fact a ballistic re-entry 
> always results in a landing west of the intended position. It sounds 
> like only one helicopter was patrolling close enough to the actual 
> landingspot to receive the beacon-transmission. If the previous mission 
> resulted in a ballistic landing, one would expect a quick look to the 
> west as soon as the DM was not spotted in its intended position, so why 
> were they send to the east?

You mean the initial announcement of the overshot? I believe 
this was just a result of miscommunication between MCC-M and 
the recovery forces, and in fact no eastward movement of 
recovery forces occured. In fact, the capsule beacon was heard 
from the backup recovery plane eight minutes after landing 
(when the antennae popped up) and located soon. The two
helicopters from the backup team were sent to the site
immediately and landed near the capsule just 42 minutes after
its landing. In fact it was a really good result of search and 
rescue with zero advance information about the ballistic entry.

Igor Lissov