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NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner took off in April, when about half the world’s population was living under lock and key.
ALMATY (KAZAKHSTAN) – An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts landed on the Kazakh steppe on Thursday, completing a 196-day mission that began with the first lockdown launch.
NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner landed about 150 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan at 0254 GMT, images transmitted by Russia’s space agency Roscosmos showed.
A NASA commentator who cited communications from ground crews at the landing site said the Soyuz lander had landed upright and the crew was working to get the trio out of the spacecraft.
The three-man crew had taken off without unusual fanfare in April with about half of the world’s population living under national closures imposed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
The mission coincided with the arrival at the space station in May of the first astronauts to take off from US soil for nearly a decade.
The mission carried out by tycoon Elon Musk’s SpaceX company as part of NASA’s commercial crew program has helped fuel conversations about a new “space race” between various countries.
Before returning from his third mission in space, former US Navy SEAL Cassidy, 50, tweeted an image of blood samples that astronauts must send at various points on their mission, including right before uncoupling.
“What is the price of a trip back to Earth? … 8 tubes of blood! The 7 shown in this picture were taken in the morning to be placed in our freezer, and the 8 will be drawn just before to decouple for ground processing shortly after landing, “Cassidy wrote.
Vagner, who was flying for the first time, was a rare Roscosmos presence on the microblogging platform, where most NASA astronauts have a profile.
“Mom, I’m coming home,” the 35-year-old tweeted on Wednesday.
Ivanishin is wrapping up his third mission, after NASA’s Kathleen Rubins, with whom he launched to the ISS in 2016, arrived for a second season aboard the station last week along with Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov from Roscosmos. .
The ISS has been a rare example of cooperation between Moscow and Washington.
Next month will mark the 20th anniversary of the permanent occupation of the orbital laboratory by humans, but the station is expected to be decommissioned in the next decade due to structural fatigue.
