Spacecraft returns trio to Earth
TWO Russian cosmonauts and a US astronaut touched down in Kazakhstan yesterday following a 173-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
“Touchdown confirmed, it’s a textbook landing,” a presenter on Nasa Television said.
Nasa astronaut Shane Kimbrough landed back on earth with Russian space agency cosmonauts Sergei Ryzhikov and Andrei Borisenko in the Soyuz MS-02.
Footage from the landing site showed the trio grinning in the spring sunlight, shaking hands with the ground recovery team and speaking on cellphones.
The landing took place southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan.
The three blasted off towards the ISS together in October, and it was Ryzhikov’s first mission.
Former Gulf War helicopter pilot Kimbrough spent close to 16 days on the US space shuttle Endeavour in 2008, while Borisenko was on his second ISS mission, following a 164-day stint in 2011.
“Goodnight Earth from @Space Station, headed your way tomorrow!” Kimbrough said in a tweet before undocking from the ISS.
With Kimbrough’s return, US astronaut Peggy Whitson, 57, takes charge of the ISS, the first woman to command the orbiting outpost on two separate occasions.
On April 24, Whitson will break the record for cumulative days spent in space by any US astronaut, eclipsing previous holder Jeff Williams’ total of 534 days.
The veteran, who now heads a crew that includes Russian Oleg Novitsky and Frenchman Thomas Pesquet, joked that Kimbrough had left big socks to fill.
Whitson, Novitsky and Pesquet are set to be joined by Nasa’s Jack Fischer and Fyodor Yurchikhin, of Roscosmos, who are due to blast off on April 20 from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The ISS space laboratory has been orbiting Earth at about 28 000km/h since 1998. – AFP