After 185 days aboard the International Space Station, two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut returned to Earth early Saturday morning.
Kate Rubins of NASA and Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan at 12:55 a.m. EDT after leaving the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft station at 9:34 p.m. EDT.
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In a blog post on Saturday, NASA reported that, pending medical checks, the crew will break up.
Rubins – the first person to sequence the DNA in space – will return home to Houston, Texas and Ryzhikov, and Kud-Sverchkov will fly back to the training base in Star City, Russia.
The Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft is seen landing in a remote area near the city of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, with NASA Expedition 64 crew members Kate Rubins, Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov from Roscosmos on Saturday, April 17, 2021. Rubins , Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov returned to space after 185 days, serving as crew members of Expedition 63-64 aboard the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA / Bill Ingalls
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Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, said all three were fine after being pulled out of the capsule, according to The Associated Press.
Trio Expedition 64 arrived at the station on October 14, 2020 and served as flight engineers.
During their tenure, the group conducted hundreds of scientific experiments, monitored the arrival and departure of several vehicles, and conducted space walks.
While the trip was Ryzhikov and Rubins’ second spaceflight, it was Kud-Sverchkov’s first.
According to Space.com, they traveled a total of 78.4 million miles, completing 2,960 Earth orbits.
NASA noted that the seven-man crew of Expedition 65 remains aboard the station, including Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos, Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Michael Hopkins, Mark Vande Hei and the new commander of Shannon Walker Station.
Hey, Novitskiy and Dubrov sales arrived on April 9, and Hopkins, Glover, Walker and Noguchi boarded the SpaceX Crew Dragon “Resilience” in November.
The three-member Expedition 64 crew from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency). From left are Kate Rubins from NASA, Sergey Ryzhikov from Roscosmos and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov from Roscosmos.
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The November flight marked the first space docking station in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Later this month, NASA SpaceX Crew-2 members – including NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet – will join the 65-member Expedition at the station.
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Their launch on the SpaceX Crew Dragon “Endeavor” is scheduled for April 22nd.
Walker will then hand over Hoshide’s command before she, Hopkins, Glover and Noguchi leave for Earth on April 29.
In November 2020, the station passed a 20-year stage of continuous human presence. To date, 243 people from 19 countries have visited the orbit laboratory.