Astronauts rescued-capsule lands off-target

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A Russian space capsule carrying an American astronaut landed hundreds of miles off-course Saturday, officials said. Search crews were tracing the Soyuz TMA-11 craft's homing beacon and were en route to the site in northern Kazakhstan by helicopter and truck. The crew —American astronaut Peggy Whitson, South Korean bioengineer Yi So-yeon and Russian flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko — were all in satisfactory condition, he said. However, all three had been subjected to severe G-forces during the re-entry. The capsule landed with an overshoot - It landed about 20 minutes past its scheduled time. The craft touched down around some 260 miles off target — a highly unusual distance given how precisely engineers plan for such landings. Officials said the craft followed a so-called "ballistic re-entry" — a very steep course that submits the crew to extreme physical forces. The crew had experienced gravitational forces up to 10 times those on Earth during the descent and were being examined on site by medical officials, and were later to return to Moscow for further evaluation.