Humans from space.[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] [3] KAZAKHSTAN -- A group of villagers living on the rural steppes of Kazakhstan got the shock of their lives when a large silver capsule crashed to Earth on April. 19 and three humans climbed out. It was a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and it was nearly 300 mites off course. The astronauts inside had just survived a "ballistic reentry"--a fiery, jolting trip through Earth's atmosphere with 10 times the force of gravity putting on their bodies. Soyuz capsules don't glide to Earth the way space shuttles do; instead, they use parachutes to land. After the capsule propped down in Kazakhstan, International Space Station Commander Peggy Whitson (inset), Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, and South Korean Yi So-yeon emerged. Whitson, an American, had been in space for 192 days. Malenchenko said the villagers who found them "could not believe their eyes.... I tried to explain to them that we came from space. They didn't understand." |
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