Gravity's a bummer, ain't it?
End of 24, start of 25. Cosmonauts Skvortsov (commander of the expedition) and Kornienko, and astronaut Caldwell-Dyson returned to Earth in their Soyuz capsule yesterday. After landing on Kazakhstan, they were found by Russian space agency and military personnel and helped from their spacecraft. After a 176-day stay in orbit, even with exercising up to 2 hours per day, their muscles had lost strength and mass to make it difficult for the space voyagers to stand again in the strong gravity of Earth. At least the season was milder than winter, when wolves can be a problem for the weakened crews.
Expedition 25 starts now with astronaut Douglas Wheelock as commander, and Flight Engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Shannon Walker as crew. Three more crewmembers will arrive at ISS aboard another Soyuz, expected to launch October 7th.
There is a Time in Orbit clock window on NASA's Expedition page: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/index.html
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