Astronauts Stuck in Space Due to Foul Weather in Asia

The freezing rain and fog whipping Central Asia on Thursday has prevented astronauts in space from landing on Earth, NASA announced.

The astronauts – the American Kevin Ford, and two Russians, Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin – found themselves stranded at International Space Station after their returning trip was delayed 24 hours due to the foul weather.

The journey was called off just as the astronauts prepared to make their way into the Russian spacecraft, Soyuz, supposed to land the three men on the frigid steppes of Kazakhstan. They have been in space for 141 days.

"We are waving off landing," NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said during live mission commentary. "No Soyuz landing tonight."

According to the NASA spokesperson, the rain and fog in Kazakhstan is not necessarily a threat to the Soyuz spacecraft and crew. But the recovery helicopters essential for retrieving the astronauts after landing would not be able to make it to their staging grounds for the landing because of bad weather conditions.

"I talked to our colleagues in Kazakhstan last night and the weather is really horrible, and a decision was made not to risk, and we suggest that we delay the landing." chief Russian flight director Vlademir Solovyev said through a translator on NASA TV.

Originally, the astronauts were scheduled to undock the Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft at the International Space Station tonight at 8:30 p.m. EDT (0030 GMT), with an expected landing of 11:56 p.m. EDT (0356 GMT).

According to NASA, Landing is now scheduled to occur on Friday (March 15) at 11:06 p.m. EDT (0206 March 16 GMT), NASA officials said.

Just for the records, this by no means constituted the first time weather has affected a Soyuz spacecraft's landing. In 2009, another Soyuz craft had its return to Earth delayed by a day because snowy conditions on the ground made the landing potentially unsafe.