International Space Station Expedition 16 have experienced high deceleration forces during the re-entry of their Soyuz TMA-11 flight.

The Soyuz spacecraft was either commanded or automatically entered into a ballistic re-entry due to anomalous data from it’s guidance systems. A ballistic trajectory is considerably steeper than a normal trajectory and causes the aerodynamic braking to increase much faster than during a shallow re-entry. It’s probably testament to the design of the Soyuz that it can withstand such a manouver.

CDR Peggy Whitson, FE1 Yuri Malenchenko and Spaceflight Participant Yi So-yeon experienced up to 10Gs of sustained deceleration to ultimately land about 295 miles off their original target in the Khazakh Steppes . Due to the distance involved, recovery forces took 45 minutes to reach the capsule. The crew were given medical examinations on site.

My understanding is that the ballistic re-entry profile is a fail-safe mode where the full guidance system cannot be relied on to execute the shallow re-entry profile correctly. I would guess that the ballistic profile is initiated by a relatively straight forward extended burn by the motor on the PAO to reduce orbital velocity and create a ballistic descent.

In the news today, German airline Lufthansa cargo seems to be on the receiving end of some Russian strong-arm tactics. Lufthansa currently operates it’s Asia cargo hub at Astana, Kazakhstan but Russia wants Lufthansa to move the hub into Siberia so Russia has removed Lufthansa’s permission to fly through their airspace. Presumably this permission will be withheld until Lufthansa complies.

The Russian Transport Ministry retorts that Lufthansa are not banned, rather their temporary permission to operate in Russian airspace has expired.

Lufthansa don’t particularly want to move to Siberia, they cite the famously poor Siberian weather and lack of ground transport infrastructure at the mentioned sites of Novosibirsk or Krasnojarsk as sufficient reason for sticking with Kazakhstan. It is worth remembering that these days, while Kazakhstan is a sovereign nation, Siberia remains part of Russia (and would therefore be a boost to tax and trade if Lufthansa operated there)

Image credit: Juergen Lehle