How about the return journey to Earth from the International Space Station on 19 April, when the Soyuz capsule took an unexpected trajectory that gave the astronauts a very rough ride:
During re-entry, the capsule switched to “ballistic re-entry mode”. This set the craft on a much steeper, more direct trajectory to Earth than intended and it landed 475 kilometres away from the intended site.
Whitson described the ordeal today during press interviews at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. For one “very long” minute, she said, the astronauts suffered forces of 8.2 times normal gravity - nearly double the force they’d expect on a normal descent.
“It was pretty stressful just trying to breathe - I could also feel my face getting squished back,” Whitson said. Of the landing, she added: “Everyone had told me to kind of expect a car crash at the end. I’d say that was a pretty accurate description.”
On the ground, a hand reached into the capsule and Whitson assumed the rescue forces had arrived. But she was actually helped out by some local folks who had spotted the capsule and driven over in their truck. One spoke to Russian crew member Yuri Malenchenko.
“They asked Yuri where the boat came from,” said Whitson. “He’s like - what boat? They were referring to the capsule. It took him a long time to explain that we actually had been in space.”
It’s not yet clear why the ballistic mode kicked in. It’s a kind of back-up plan in the event of certain system failures, and it has triggered twice before, in October last year and in 2003. The current best guess is that on the last two occasions, it occurred because a propulsion module attached to the landing capsule failed to separate on re-entry at the right time.
https://www.newscientist.com/blog/space/2008/05/astronaut-recalls-going-ballistic.html
The video above explains ballistic re-entry too.
Imaging getting rescued by Alien Guy and having to tell him you'd just come from space.
“It’s going to be a bumpy ride” PING!!!