NASA News: Three-Person Crew Lands Safely on Earth
Fresh from the International Space Station, three astronauts have safely arrived back home on Friday after more than four months inside the ISS.
According to The Associated Press, the astronauts safely touched down about 120 kilometers northeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, following a total of 141 days in outer space.
The three, namely Kjell Lindgren from NASA, Oleg Kononenko who hails from Russia, and Japan's Kimiya Yui, boarded the Soyuz TMA-17M capsule and were scheduled to land at 7:12 PM EST. Fortunately, the capsule landed on time, allowing the three spacemen to get out of the cramped container.
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Russia deployed a rescue team with four helicopters to the landing site to check on the astronauts. The men immediately flew to Dzhezkazgan for a quick inspection, but they will have to go through additional checkups to make sure they are at good health.
The rest of the team are still at the ISS including Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly and Russian crew members Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov. To replace the three who left the space station, Tim Kopra from NASA, Yuri Malenchenko from Russia, and Tim Peake, who represents the European Space Agency, will fly to outer space this coming Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the "Star Wars" craze continues to build up, and to be in with the hype, a NASA chief says there is one effective way to create a Death Star, Empire's most massive weapon that has ever graced the big screens and paperbacks.
According to WIRED, Chief Engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Brian Muirhead says the most plausible way to create a Death Star is to build it from an asteroid. "It could provide the metals. You have organic compounds, you have water - all the building blocks you would need to build your family Death Star," Muirhead says.
Not only does Muirhead believe that a Death Star can possibly be made from an already-existing asteroid but he has also been working with asteroids for some time as he is among the experts working on NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission.
