MOSCOW — A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and one American from the International Space Station landed Monday in Kazakhstan, ending a record-breaking stay for the Russian pair.
The capsule landed on the Kazakh steppe about 3 1/2 hours after undocking from the ISS in an apparently trouble-free descent.
Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub returned after 374 days aboard the space station, the longest continuous stay there. Also in the capsule was American Tracy Dyson, who was in the space station for six months.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
A Russian space capsule undocked from the International Space Station on Monday to take three astronauts back to Earth, two of them completing a record-long stay on the orbiting laboratory.
The capsule carrying Russians Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and American Tracy Dyson is expected to land in the vast Kazakhstan steppe about 3 1/2 hours after the undocking.
Kononenko and Chub blasted off for the space station on Sept. 15, 2023, and on Friday set the record for the longest continuous mission on the ISS. Dyson, in her third mission into outer space, spent six months aboard.
Eight astronauts remain on the space station, including Americans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have remained long past their scheduled return to Earth.
They arrived in June as the first crew of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule. But their trip was marred by thruster troubles and helium leaks, and the U.S. space agency NASA decided it was too risky to return them on Starliner.
The two astronauts will ride home with SpaceX next year.
Source Agencies
