A Soyuz capsule from the International Space Station (ISS) has returned safely to Earth one Russian cosmonaut and two crewmembers.
According to Reuters, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and German flight engineer Alexander Gerst from the European Space Agency accompanied Maxim Suraev, a Russian space agency veteran. The capsule left the ISS at 7:31 p.m. Sunday and landed in Kazakhstan late that night.
The astronauts had finished a five-and-a-half month tour on the ISS and returned on the same capsule that carried them up. Toward the end of their stay, the ISS sent off a Dragon capsule that had brought supplies via SpaceX and welcomed a Russian resupply mission soon after. That was just a day after Orbital Sciences saw its unmanned spacecraft explode just seconds after taking off.
"It's been an honor and a privilege to spend 165 days up here. With that said, I'm looking forward to heading home," Wiseman said on NASA Television.
Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, NASA astronaut Terry Virts and Italy's Samantha Cristoforetti will take the three landed crewmembers' place on Nov. 23. Another Soyuz capsule will launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at that time.
"They say this is the most complex machine that humanity has ever built," Gerst said on Saturday, according to Reuters. "Even after half a year on board, it is impossible for me to fathom how complex it is to actually operate this machine."
Wiseman, Gerst and Suraev clocked about 70 million miles during their 165-day tour and the former two just finished their first mission to the floating science station, NASA noted on its ISS blog.
