Russian space authorities said on Saturday they had improved safety measures for spaceships returning to Earth from the International Space Station after a series of rough landings. The Soyuz re-entry vehicle has malfunctioned twice in the past year, raising concerns about its reliability. A South Korean astronaut said she feared death during a landing in April. Speaking a day before a U.S.-Russian team blasts off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the head of Russia's space agency, Anatoly Perminov, said all potential glitches have been removed. "A working commission has given us a list of recommendations. We have done everything according to it as of today. And this should lead to a normal landing and not a ballistic one. It's a very important goal," he was quoted as saying by Reuters. A ballistic landing is steeper than a normal one. "A U.S. delegation of specialists has visited here and they looked into it in all detail and they were satisfied," he said. U.S. space tourist Richard Garriott will travel to the space station alongside U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov in the next expedition, which launches on Sunday at 1:03 p.m. (0503 GMT). Garriott and the outgoing space station team are due return to earth on Oct. 24 aboard the three-man capsule that will land in the open steppes of Kazakhstan. The son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, he paid more than $30 million for his ticket to space. The video game magnate and two crew members appeared confident ahead of the launch. "I've simulated the ballistic reentry in the centrifuge many times," Garriott told reporters from behind a glass quarantine panel. "And so if that were to occur, I would not be terribly alarmed."
