Three spacefliers from the International Space Station made a photogenic return to Earth today, touching down in the steppes of Kazakhstan.
The landing marked the end of a 186-day tour of duty for NASA astronaut Tim Kopra, Britain’s Tim Peake and Russia’s Yuri Malenchenko. The homeward journey began when the trio’s Russian Soyuz capsule undocked from the station at 10:52 p.m. PT Friday, leading up to the parachute-assisted descent through partly cloudy skies a little more than three hours later.
NASA photographer Bill Ingalls and the European Space Agency’s Stephane Corvaja captured some classic scenes of the homecoming from a Russian recovery helicopter, and later from the ground:
The crew’s return marks the completion of data collection for several NASA studies aimed at gauging the effects of long-term spaceflight on various aspects of human health, including eyesight, cognition and the microbiome.
“It takes a long time to complete the number of subjects required for human research investigations – it’s usually years in the making – so this is a big milestone,” lead expedition scientist Yuri Guinart-Ramirez said in a blog posting about the studies earlier this month.
Today also marks the switchover from Expedition 47 to Expedition 48 on the space station. NASA astronaut Jeff Williams is now the commander of the orbiting outpost, with Russia’s Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin filling out the three-man crew.
Peake earned a place in space history by becoming the first astronaut to go into orbit on behalf of the British government under the auspices of the European Space Agency. (Other Britons have flown in space as NASA astronauts or private citizens.) He also holds the in-space record for running a marathon, albeit on a treadmill.
After a quick round of medical checks at the landing site, southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan, the three crewmates will head their separate ways for further debriefings and rehabilitation.
Meanwhile, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and Japanese spaceflier Takuya Onishi are preparing for their July 6 launch to the space station from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan. Their arrival will bring the station’s crew back to its normal complement of six.