Two astronauts, from the US and Italy, and a Russian cosmonaut on Thursday landed in Kazakhstan after almost five months on the International Space Station, footage from the Russian space agency showed.
American Randy Bresnik, Paolo Nespoli of Italy and Sergey Ryazanskiy of Russia landed on the Kazakh steppe at 14:37 local time (08:37 GMT) in a Soyuz MS-05 spacecraft.
Over 139 days in space the three men "have supported hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science aboard humanity's only microgravity laboratory", NASA said in an earlier statement.
Bresnik took part in several spacewalks to fix a robotic arm that latches onto incoming spaceships packed with supplies, while all three men were involved in a live video chat with Pope Francis from the space station.
On Sunday Scott Tingle of NASA, Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will blast off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome to replace the returning astronauts and cosmonaut.
The space travellers will join three other crew members currently on the ISS.
In October Russia's space agency said a manned Soyuz rocket had suffered a partial loss of pressure as it returned to Earth from the ISS in April this year.
The incident did not put the lives of the crew in danger, Roscosmos said, but it was the latest in the string of glitches to hit the country's space programme, which this month extended to a failed satellite launch.
NASA stopped its own manned launches to the ISS in 2011 but recently moved to increase its crew complement aboard the ISS as the Russians cut theirs in a cost-saving measure announced last year.
The ISS laboratory, a rare example of American and Russian international cooperation, has been orbiting Earth at about 28 000km/h since 1998.
Source: AFP
GMT 16:03 2018 Wednesday ,28 November
Executive Office of Arab Ministers of Communications starts in CairoGMT 09:12 2018 Thursday ,15 November
Syria, Iran discuss enhancing scientific cooperationGMT 17:45 2018 Wednesday ,31 October
Next expedition may go to ISS on 3 DecemberGMT 13:56 2018 Saturday ,27 October
Head of Soviet space shuttle program dies aged 89GMT 15:58 2018 Monday ,15 October
Crew scheduled to go to ISS to remain unchangedGMT 10:57 2018 Saturday ,13 October
Expert says crewless ISS poses risk of station’s lossGMT 18:49 2018 Thursday ,11 October
Soyuz-FG suffers setback in 165th second of flightGMT 17:53 2018 Sunday ,07 October
Science, technologies to be bridge between Russian and JapanMaintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©
Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©
Send your comments
Your comment as a visitor