This is an image of a Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft just one second from landing on the very hard soil of the tundra near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. It’s a perfectly peaceful moment — the calm before the rocking rumpus.
The Soyuz TMA-03M brought Expedition 31’s Commander Oleg Kononenko and Flight Engineers Don Pettit and Andre Kuipers back to Earth on Sunday.
Pettit is one of our favourite astronauts because of his obsession with photography, awesome videos and all kinds of cool stuff. [NASA]