Nasa has admitted that the wildly off-target landing of the Russian Soyuz space craft last week is “clearly a concern”.

That statement came as the Russian Interfax agency reported that the Soyuz entered the atmosphere the wrong way round; with its hatch rather than its heat shield taking the strain of re-entry.

“The fact that the entire crew ended up whole and undamaged is a great success. Everything could have turned out much worse. You could say the situation was on a razor’s edge,” an unnamed Russian official told the agency (Interfax is subscription only but you can read a follow up story from AP).

Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s space operations chief, is the man who made the “clearly a concern” remark. Space.com notes other concerning points he mentioned at a recent press briefing:

– “unusual buffeting, jarring and shaking” before the descent. This might suggest the Soyuz’s propulsion module did not detached as planned.

– radio contact with mission control was lost during reentry.

– there were signs of smoke inside the Soyuz during reentry

Could they have predicted that this would happen? Here’s a quote from an article by Australian newspaper The Age:

“There is very little probability of another ballistic landing," said General Vladimir Popov, who heads the team responsible for Russia’s space search and rescue operations. "But we must be prepared for any variant, and we are.”

When did Popov say that? Way back in 2003…

Image: artist’s impression of correct Soyuz descent (from Nasa’s Soyuz landing timeline).