The crew is flying home after seven months onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Apart from Russian Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin and Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria from the United States, the 14th crew also includes Hungarian-born space tourist and software billionaire, Charles Simonyi.
Simonyi, who is a trained pilot in multi-engine aircraft with current licenses in jets and helicopters and more than 2,000 hours of flying time under his belt, arrived at the ISS April 10 together with the 15th ISS crew.
The crew is in good health and high spirits. "Now the most important thing is that they all go through the descent and the landing," Valery Lyndin, a spokesman for the Mission Control, said.
The landing capsule Soyuz TMA-9 was originally expected to land April 20 at the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan but the descent was postponed due to spring floods in the Kazakh steppes.
The new crew consists of Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov, both from Russia, who will spend 189 days at the station and will conduct three spacewalks, one in U.S.-made spacesuits and the other two in Russian-made outfits.
The third crew member, U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams, who replaced the European Space Agency's German astronaut Thomas Reiter in December 2006, will stay on board the ISS for a further several months.
They will later be joined by astronaut Clayton Anderson, who will arrive on board the space shuttle Endeavor June 28, and Daniel Tani, who will be carried to the ISS by the space shuttle Discovery, scheduled for lift off September 7.
