Kazakhstan: ISS crew land safely back on Earth after 200-day mission

A capsule from the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft carrying NASA’s Terry Virts, Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA and Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos, landed safely near Dzhezkazgan on the Kazakhstan steppe after undocking from the International Space Station (ISS), Thursday. The landing was watched and managed by the staff at Mission Control Centre in Mosow. The trio had been on the ISS since November 2014, in a mission which was extended due to the flight failure of the Progress M-27M spacecraft. The last week of the trio’s mission had been wrought with difficulty. First the ISS had to dodge space debris from an old Minotaur Rocket, and then their Soyuz spacecraft inadvertently fired its thrusters, whilst the ISS crew was carrying out communication tests between the craft and the space station. Despite this their entry passed off without incident. After the touchdown Russian recovery forces will extract the crew from the craft, before carrying out a series of medical checks at a mobile medical centre. The crew will then board MI-8 helicopters and be flown to a nearby airfield, where after eight months together the crew will part ways.