MOSCOW (AP) – An American astronaut and two Russians returned to Earth after six months aboard the International Space Station.
A Soyuz space capsule transported by Kate Rubins from NASA and the Russians Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov landed on Saturday at 0455 GMT (12:55 am EDT) in the steppes of Kazakhstan.
Dmitry Rogozin, head of Russia’s Roskosmos space agency, said all three were fine after being pulled out of the capsule and began to reclimate with the attraction of gravity.
The three had arrived at the orbiting laboratory complex on October 14.
There are now seven people aboard the ISS: NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hey and Russians Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov arrived on April 9; Americans Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japanese Soichi Noguchi, came on board in November on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience, the first ISS dock under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.