Soyuz TMA-5 landing with ESA astronaut Roberto Vittori marks completion of European Eneide mission

N° 22-2005 - Paris, 25 April 2005

Soyuz TMA-5 landing with ESA astronaut Roberto Vittori marks completion of
European Eneide mission

The Eneide mission to the International Space Station (ISS) has come to a
successful end with the landing of ESA astronaut Roberto Vittori,
accompanied by the ISS Expedition 10 crew. The command module of the Soyuz
TMA-5 spacecraft touched down near the town of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan at
04:07 local time (00:07 Central European Summer Time) on Monday 25 April.

All the major objectives of the mission, which lasted ten days, including
eight days on the ISS, were achieved. The experiment programme was
successfully completed, and the ISS Expedition crew was exchanged along with
the Soyuz TMA-5 spacecraft, which has been stationed at the ISS for the past
six months, serving as the crew lifeboat.

The hatches between the returning Soyuz TMA-5 and the ISS were closed at
17:34 CEST on Sunday 24 April, and the crew then carried out standard
procedures and checks prior to undocking. At 20:44 CEST Soyuz TMA-5 undocked
from the ISS, with Vittori, as Flight Engineer, taking an active role in the
re-entry, descent and landing operations, alongside Russian cosmonaut
Salizhan Sharipov, the Soyuz Commander. Sharipov and the Soyuz 2nd Flight
Engineer Leroy Chiao (NASA) were the returning Expedition 10 crew, having
been stationed on the ISS since 16 October 2004.

All stages of the re-entry went according to plan. Soyuz TMA-5 went through
module separation, prior to re-entry, with the spacecraft's utility and
instrument-assembly modules being uncoupled from the command module and
burnt up in the Earth's atmosphere. The command module containing the crew
took a different flight profile to the other modules, entering the Earth's
atmosphere three hours after undocking at 23:44 CEST. The main parachute of
the command module opened at 23:53 CEST with the landing taking place in the
dark before dawn at 04:07 local time in Kazkhstan, 00:07 CEST, on Monday 25
April.

During the Eneide mission, Roberto Vittori carried out a programme
comprising 22 on-orbit experiments in the fields of biology, human
physiology, technology and education. Many of these were developed by
Italian researchers and built by Italian industry and research institutions.
Scientists from Denmark, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, the USA and from ESA
were also involved in the programme.

Mission control for the Eneide mission was performed by an ESA Operations
Team from the new Columbus Control Centre on the premises of the German
Aerospace Center DLR at Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich, Germany, who provided
all essential coordination and decision-making functions for the mission in
close cooperation with the ISS partner control centres in Moscow, Houston
and Huntsville (Alabama), the Lazio User Centre at the Tor Vergata
University in Rome, Italy, and ESA's Eneide Mission Management Team in
Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

The Eneide mission was co-sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Defence and
the Region of Lazio, in the framework of an agreement between ESA and
Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency. During the mission, Roberto
Vittori had numerous contacts with representatives of the Italian
government, the Ministry of Defence, the Region of Lazio, the media and
schoolchildren .

In addition to the experiment programme carried out by Roberto Vittori, the
Eneide mission served to exchange the ISS Expedition crew. The ISS
Expedition 10 crew has now been replaced by the ISS Expedition 11 crew,
Sergei Krikalev (Roscosmos) and John Phillips (NASA), who arrived with
Roberto Vittori at the ISS in Soyuz TMA-6 on 17 April and are scheduled to
return to Earth in October.

Each Soyuz TMA spacecraft serves not only as a crew exchange vehicle but
also as an emergency return vehicle or lifeboat at the ISS. Soyuz TMA-6
will remain at the ISS with the Expedition 11 crew for the next six months.
Vittori's launch from Baikonur was the sixth flight for the new Soyuz TMA
series, the first having been in October 2002 . With Vittori's return and
landing in Soyuz TMA-5, European astronauts have flown in all six Soyuz TMA
spacecraft.

Further information on the Eneide mission and its experiment programme can
be obtained at www.esa.int/eneide and www.spaceflight.esa.int/eneide/status.


For further information please contact:

Franco Bonacina
ESA Media Relations Division
Paris (France)
Tel: +33 1 5369 7155
Fax: +33 1 5369 7690

Dieter Isakeit
Erasmus User Centre and Communication Office
Directorate of Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration Programmes
Noordwijk (The Netherlands)
Tel: +31 71 565 5451
Fax: +31 71 565 8008
e-mail:


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Jacques :-)

www.spacepatches.info