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Nearly 200 rescuers to ensure safe landing of Soyuz-MS in Kazakhstan

The landing pod is expected to depart from the International Space Station (ISS) and touch down on April 10

YEKATERINBURG, April 8. /TASS/. About 200 rescuers of Russia’s Central Military District will be deployed in Kazakhstan to ensure safe landing of Russia’s Soyuz-MS spacecraft, the district’s press service said on Saturday.

"The effort to ensure the safe landing will involve a total of 14 Mi-8 helicopters, three An-26 and two An-12 aircraft, as well as 20 vehicles, including all-terrain (ZIL-4906) Blue Bird search and rescue vehicles," the press service said.

The landing pod is expected to depart from the International Space Station (ISS) and touch down on April 10 south of the Kazakh city of Zhezgazgan, bringing back to Earth NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko.

Russian servicemen from the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabink regions in the Urals took part in more than 50 missions to ensure safe landing of manned spacecraft in the past decade. They located and evacuated over 200 cosmonauts and astronauts, nearly half of them foreigners.