A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and one American from the International Space Station (ISS) landed in Kazakhstan on Monday, ending a record-breaking stay for the Russian pair.
The capsule landed on the Kazakh steppe about three-and-a-half hours after undocking from the ISS in an apparently trouble-free descent. In the last stage of the landing, it descended under a red-and-white parachute at about 7.2mps, with small rockets fired in the final seconds to cushion the touchdown.
The astronauts were extracted from the capsule and placed in nearby chairs to help them adjust to gravity, then given medical examinations in a nearby tent.
Photo: Roscosmos via Reuters
Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub returned after 374 days aboard the ISS; on Friday last week they broke the record for the longest continuous stay there. Also in the capsule was Tracy Dyson of the US, who was in the ISS for six months.
Eight astronauts remain in the ISS, including Americans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have remained long past their scheduled return to Earth.
They arrived in June as the first crew of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule, but their trip was marred by thruster troubles and helium leaks, and US space agency NASA decided it was too risky to return them on Starliner.
The two astronauts are to ride home with SpaceX next year.
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