A Russian state commission will investigate why the Soyuz TMA-10 vehicle returning Expedition 15 and a Malaysian space tourist from the International Space Station (ISS) shifted into a steeper "ballistic" trajectory early Oct. 21 and landed some 340 kilometers (210 miles) short of its intended landing zone.

The three space travelers - Expedition 15 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov, and Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, a Malaysian physician selected in a competition to fly as a "spaceflight participant" as part of a Russia/Malaysia arms deal - landed safely and were extracted from the Soyuz about 20 minutes later by helicopter-mounted rescue forces.

Russia has kept a pair of MI-8 helicopters and a fixed-wing aircraft orbiting over the ballistic zone to the west of the nominal landing zone just northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, since Expedition 6 experienced a similar shortfall and went unrecovered for several hours, according to a NASA spokesman.

Anatoly Perminov, head of Russia's Federal Space Agency, told reporters after the landing that a state commission would examine why the Soyuz computer unexpectedly downloaded commands for a steeper ballistic landing instead of the nominal trajectory.

The trio returned in the Soyuz that delivered Expedition 15 to the ISS, leaving behind the fresh vehicle that delivered Expedition 16 with Shukor in the so-called "taxi seat" on Oct. 12 (DAILY, Oct. 15). The third member of Expedition 16 - NASA's Clayton Anderson - is scheduled to return to Earth on the space shuttle Discovery at the conclusion of the upcoming STS-120/10A station-assembly mission.