Capsule carrying record-breaking astronauts returns to Earth
23 September 2024, 14:24
Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub spent 374 days in space.
A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and one American from the International Space Station (ISS) has landed in Kazakhstan – ending a record-breaking stay for the Russian pair.
The capsule landed on the Kazakh steppe about three-and-a-half hours after undocking from the ISS in an apparently trouble-free descent.
In the last stage of the landing, it descended under a red-and-white parachute at about 7.2 metres per second (16 mph), with small rockets fired in the final seconds to cushion the touchdown.
After 184 days in space, 2,944 orbits of the Earth, 78 million miles traveled, and a safe landing, astronaut Tracy Dyson’s mission concludes. pic.twitter.com/csgJcgSTSZ
— NASA (@NASA) September 23, 2024
The astronauts were to be extracted from the capsule and placed in nearby chairs to help them adjust to gravity, then given medical examinations in a nearby tent.
Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub returned after 374 days aboard the space station, the longest continuous stay there.
Also in the capsule was American Tracy Dyson, who was in the space station for six months.
Eight astronauts remain in the space station, including Americans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have remained long past their scheduled return to Earth.
They arrived in June as the first crew of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule. But their trip was marred by thruster troubles and helium leaks, and the US space agency Nasa decided it was too risky to return them on Starliner.
The two astronauts are to ride home with SpaceX next year.
