Two US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut returned to earth safely on Friday after months aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka returned in a Soyuz capsule which came down in a grassland plain in Kazakhstan, south-east of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan. The landing was broadcast live by the US space agency.
The three space travellers had undocked the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft from the ISS, which is 408 kilometres above the Earth, at around 2200 GMT Thursday.
On Thursday evening, the crew conducted a change of command ceremony in which Skripochka ceremonially handed control of the orbiting laboratory to newly-arrived NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy.
Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner remain on the orbiting international space station.
The ISS has been a collaboration of mostly US and Russian crews. The laboratory is tasked with conducting scientific experiments that would be impossible on Earth’s surface.(dpa)
