[FPSPACE] Soyuz touch down

[Geert Sassen]

I'm still puzzling a bit regarding the april 19 landing and I'm 
wondering exactly how rough was the actual touch down.

If you look at several of the pictures taken after landing (for instance 
http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/080423-exp16-soyuz-02.jpg 
) there seems to be a kind of 'hole' or 'dent' or whatever in the ground 
some three or four meters upwind of the location of the capsule (wind 
direction can be viewed from some flags and also from the fact that 
helicopters will normally land pointing into the wind), other pictures 
show officials looking at this 'crater' and on the bottom of the DM a 
lot of sand can be seen, so it looks like this is the position were the 
capsule hit the ground, then bounced up and landed again on its side 
several meters further downwind.

The weird thing however is that it was mentioned the softlanding rockets 
caused a small steppefire (not unusual, this has happened before), which 
also burned the parachute (which we can assume came down downwind from 
the DM). However, the only 'burn-marks' on the steppe start apparently 
several meters downwind from the location of the DM (in the direction of 
the hatch), there is no sign of any burn damage anywhere near the 'dent' 
and neither is there any burn damage of the grass anywhere near the 
bottom of the DM (there is a lot of sand on the bottom of the DM, but 
the grass around it seems unscatched), the apparently area of scorched 
and burned grass starts some meters downwind from the hatch.

Unexplained as yet is also the smoke in the cabine, which seems to have 
started during the parachute decent. Assuming an overheating panel, they 
switched off some instruments, but what exactly was overheating (of 
short circuiting?) and what exactly did they switch off.
Remember two important events happen shortly prior to the actual touch down:
1) the shock absorbers of the seats are activated, this caused the seats 
to 'rise' up (crew almost touching the instrument panel), and enables 
the seats and shock absorbers to withstand the force of the actual 
landing, if these shock absorbers are not activated landing will be very 
rough.
2) the soft landing rockets fire close above the ground.
Failure of any of these items can cause a very rough landing and 
injuries as sustained by Yi