Vice President Dick Cheney offered his congratulations to the International Space Station Expedition Six crew just hours after the three crewmembers safely landed Saturday night in Kazakhstan.
The Vice President spoke by telephone with Expedition Six Commander Kenneth Bowersox, and he offered his appreciation for the crew’s dedication and willingness to extend their mission in the wake of the Space Shuttle Columbia mishap.
Bowersox, NASA Space Station Science Officer Donald Pettit, and Russian Flight Engineer Nikolay Budarin are doing well and have been reunited with their families in the Russian cosmonaut-training center, Star City, near Moscow.
The Expedition Six crew spent about five-and-a-half months in orbit onboard the International Space Station. Originally slated to return to Earth in March on a NASA Space Shuttle, the crew used a Soyuz TMA spacecraft instead. Russian spacecraft will be used to re-supply the Station and for Expedition crew exchange until the NASA Space Shuttle fleet returns to flight status. Although the crew landed safely, the Soyuz spacecraft landed almost 300 miles short of the intended touchdown area. A joint NASA-Russia investigation team begins work this week to determine the cause of the landing error.