Russian-US crew return to Earth from mission on board ISS
An international three-man crew onboard a Russian-made Soyuz capsule touched down successfully on the cloudless central Kazakhstan steppe this morning after 123 days at the International Space Station. NASA’s Joe Acaba and Russian colleagues Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin undocked from the orbiting laboratory some three and a half hours before touchdown. The Soyuz craft remains the only means for international astronauts to reach the space station since the decommissioning of the US Shuttle fleet in 2011. The size of the three-person complement currently at the space station will be doubled when they are joined next month by US astronaut Kevin Ford and Russians Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin. All three were then transported to an on site medical tent for further evaluation.
