Federal Air Transport Agency specifies time of Soyuz ship landing

Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) has specified the time of landing of the Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft. The decent module of the spacecraft with a crew of the International Space Station (ISS) will land on March 16 at 07:06 MSK about 50 kilometres north of the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, the press service of Rosaviatsiya told Itar-Tass on Friday. The landing of the descent module of the manned spacecraft Soyuz TMA-06M, initially scheduled for March 15, was delayed for a day due to adverse weather conditions. The air temperature in the landing was zero degrees Celsius and it was raining. On Thursday afternoon, the leadership of the search-and-rescue unit of the Central Military District made a proposal to the Mission Control Centre in the Moscow regional town Korolev to delay the landing of the spaceship Soyuz TMA-06M for a day over the bad weather in the landing zone. “The highest humidity level is reported at the town Arkalyk, nonstop rain is going on, the air temperature is about zero degrees Celsius, the wind speed is 5–7 metres per second,” the press service of the Central Military District said. The severe weather complicates the operation of military aviation, the rescue teams cannot head for the main and reserve landing zones of the spaceship. ISS Expedition 34 crew comprising Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin and NASA astronaut Kevin Ford is returning back to Earth.