Our astronauts who've been stuck up in space at the Russian International Space station made it back to terra firma, today and I think it is something to be noted! Of course they were stuck there because of the recent disaster. It would have been several more months, at least, before they may have had another chance to come home. SO...our two and one Russian climbed into a module which measured about 6 feet by 6 feet and headed for Earth! That they made it seems a miracle when you read about it. Here's a bit; there are plenty more stories about it at google news:

Moscow — It could have been a lot worse for the two U.S. astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut whose landing was more than 450 kilometres off course and whose recovery was hours late.

In 1976, a Soyuz spacecraft came down in a freezing squall and splashed into a lake; the crew spent the night bobbing in the capsule.

Eleven years before that, two cosmonauts overshot their touchdown site by 2,000 kilometres and found themselves deep in a forest with hungry wolves. That is when Russian space officials decided to pack a sawed-off shotgun aboard every spacecraft.

Astronaut Kenneth Bowersox said with a smile that he didn't need the gun in the Kazakh steppes where he landed Sunday: "There was nothing out there but grass and us."

Here's to their successful return!!!

kat