Moscow — A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and one American from the International Space Station landed Monday in Kazakhstan, ending a record-breaking stay for the Russian pair.
The capsule landed on the Kazakh steppe about 3 1/2 hours after undocking from the space station in an apparently trouble-free descent. In the last stage of the landing, it descended under a red-and-white parachute at about 16 mph, 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.
Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub returned after 374 days aboard the space station; on Friday they broke the record for the longest continuous stay there. Also in the capsule was American Tracy Dyson, who was in the space station for six months.
Astronaut Tracy Dyson and her crewmates are safely home on Earth after today's Soyuz landing at 7:59am ET (1159 UTC). Dyson has completed a six-month research mission on the @Space_Station, her third spaceflight: https://t.co/6ZPnqnAGvzpic.twitter.com/S3T7FHc2Z9
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 the U.S. space agency NASA decided it was too risky to return them on Starliner.
The two astronauts will ride home on a SpaceX rocket next year.
Merit Street Media
