Trio home after 6-month mission on space station
Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin gets a medical check shortly after landing in a remote area outside the town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan on Thursday.
A trio of space travelers safely returned to Earth on Thursday after a six-month mission on the International Space Station.
The Soyuz MS-16 capsule carrying NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, and Roscosmos’ Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner landed on the steppes of Kazakhstan southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan at 7:54am.
After a brief medical checkup, the three will be taken by helicopters to Dzhezkazgan from where they will depart for home.
Cassidy will board a NASA plane back to Houston, while Vagner and Ivanishin will fly home to Star City in Russia.
The crew smiled as they talked to masked members of the recovery team. NASA and Roscosmos reported that they were in good condition. As part of additional precautions due to the coronavirus, the recovery team members meeting the crew were tested and the number of people involved in the recovery effort was limited.
Cassidy, Ivanishin and Vagner spent 196 days in orbit, having arrived at ISS on April 9.
They were replaced by NASA’s Kate Rubins and Roscosmos’ Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, who arrived at the orbiting outpost a week ago for a six-month stay.
Cassidy, returning from his third space mission, has now spent a total of 378 days in space, the fifth highest among US astronauts.
