Despite a bad weather forecast and tension between the U.S. and Russia, two cosmonauts and one astronaut returned to Earth safely from the International Space Station (ISS).

According to CBS News, the three ISS crewmembers landed in near-zero temperatures with snow on the ground and low clouds. The Soyuz TMA-10M capsule landed Monday with the assisting of a parachute and rocket.

"Bye, bye, station," one crewmember radioed after leaving the ISS after 166 days aboard.

"Everything is fine on board. Pressure is stable, everything is [normal]," said another crewmember.

The landing in Kazakhstan was almost delayed because the Russian receivers' MI8 helicopters were experiencing frozen rotors. The helicopters needed to return to a nearby staging area in Karaganda and the leaders of Expedition 38 decided to give the mission a go ahead.

Soyuz commander Oleg Kotov, flight engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy and NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins were cleared to land and officially departed the ISS at 8:02 p.m.

Kotov performed rocket blast for nearly five minutes to slow the module by about 286 miles per hour. As the Soyuz craft broke into three separate parts, they each began their sharp descent towards Kazakhstan. As they entered the Earth's atmosphere, the crewmembers activated heat shields for their landers due to the intense temperatures of the downward trajectory.

At just under seven miles off the ground, the crewmembers activated the parachute to slow down to 16 miles per hour and the very last leg of the return to Earth. The event was broadcast live, but low clouds fogged the view. Russian mission controllers said the crewmembers were in good condition upon landing.

According to NASA, Hopkins and Ryazanskiy each finished their first stint on the ISS, 166 days each, while Kotov has logged 526 days over a span of three missions.

Hopkins and NASA astronaut Ralph Mastracchio performed a spacewalk around Christmastime to repair a malfunctioning cooling pump, a problem that needed to be worked out sooner rather than later.

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