News Brief: Three spacefliers touched down amid subfreezing temperatures in Kazakhstan tonight, closing out their 168-day mission on the International Space Station. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft brought NASA’s Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei, plus Russia’s Alexander Mazurkin, back to Earth at 6:31 p.m. PT Tuesday (8:31 a.m. local time Wednesday). Russian commander Anton Shkaplerov, NASA’s Scott Tingle and Japan’s Norishige Kanai remain on the orbital outpost. They’re due to be joined in March by Russia’s Oleg Artermyev and NASA’s Ricky Arnold and Drew Feustel.
#ICYMI, three humans safely landed back on planet Earth at 9:31pm ET after five and a half months in space. Discover more about their mission to @Space_Station and back: https://t.co/vBm2uuc5TG pic.twitter.com/xVaNScIs0m
— NASA (@NASA) February 28, 2018
