SPACE CENTER HOUSTON -- Life in Space is smooth. But for Astronaut Peggy Whitson, getting home from orbit was anything but.

"People ask me if I was scared. I really didn't have time to be,” said Whitson.

When the Russian Soyuz Capsule left the International Space Station, something failed, forcing a sort of upside-down reentry.

It's a risky last option that puts those aboard the spacecraft through a G-Force factor of eight.

"It definitely made it hard to breathe and I could feel my face being pulled back,” said Whitson. “So, it was an interesting time period.”   

Things were not much better on the ground, because the capsule landed 295 miles off course.

"We had bounced and rolled. I didn't really feel the roll, but (Cosmonaut) Yuri (Malenchenko) felt like we had bounced and was worried about whether or not we had actually stopped moving,” said Whitson.

Whitson, the first female commander of the space station and who holds the record for the longest time cumulative time in space among U.S. astronauts, was not injured.

But the last two Soyuz landings have had the same trouble. When the Shuttle fleet retires in 2010, the Soyuz will be the only way to and from the International Space Station for American astronauts.

Space travel is about risk. It is also about problem solving.

That’s something Russian space officials are still working on.

“The Russian's don't want to kill their Cosmonauts any more than we want to kill our astronauts in spacecraft. They will get to the bottom of this,” said Whitson.

Let’s hope so, because soon, it will be the only option.