Two NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut yesterday made a safe return from the International Space Station (ISS) to a planet roiled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Andrew Morgan, Jessica Meir and Oleg Skripochka touched down in central Kazakhstan at 5:16am GMT in the first returning mission since the WHO declared the coronavirus a global pandemic last month.
“TOUCHDOWN. Welcome home, Oleg Skripochka, Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir,” Russia’s Roscosmos Space Agency wrote on Twitter yesterday.
Photo: AP / Roscosmos Space Agency
Although the space explorers’ landing site southeast of Dzhezkazgan was the same as for previous crews, the pandemic forced the space agency to introduce some changes to mission-end protocol.
Roscosmos on Tuesday said that the crews meeting the trio at the landing site had been tested for COVID-19 and would don full-body protective wear.
The crew also avoided the usual staging post of Karagandy International Airport — shut down like so many other airports across the world — for their respective journeys back to Russia and the US.
Instead, Skripochka is to fly from the Baikonur Cosmodrome used to launch missions to the ISS, while the NASA duo is to take off in an airplane from the steppe city of Kyzlorda after a drive of several hours.
In a media appearance aboard the ISS prior to her departure, Meir said that it would be difficult to forgo embraces with family and friends as she gets up to speed with the new culture of social distancing on Earth.
“I think I will feel more isolated on Earth than here,” reflected Meir, who made history as one half of the first all-woman spacewalk along with NASA colleague Christina Koch in October last year.
The International Space Station — a rare example of cooperation between Russia and the West — has been orbiting Earth at about 28,000kph since 1998.
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