SOYUZ MS-26 SPACECRAFT BRINGS NASA, RUSSIA ASTRONAUTS BACK TO EARTH

Russian astronauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Wagner have returned to Earth along with American Donald Pettit after a seven-month science mission on board the International Space Station (ISS).

The Russian Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft carrying the trio touched down southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 6:20am (01:20 GMT) on Sunday, the landing confirmed by the United States’s NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency.

The timing of their parachute-assisted return to Earth coincided with the US astronaut’s 70th birthday, NASA said on the social media platform X.

NASA said the crew was moved to a recovery staging area in the city of Karaganda, adding that Pettit was doing well.

The crew arrived on the orbiting ISS laboratory on September 11, 2024, spending 220 days in space during which they orbited the Earth 3,520 times, completing a journey of 93.3 million miles (150.15 million km), NASA said in a statement.

Pettit spent his time researching “in-orbit metal 3D printing capabilities” and “water sanitisation technologies” while exploring plant growth and fire behaviour in space.

This was Pettit’s fourth spaceflight, with a total of 590 days in orbit logged throughout his career. Ovchinin has notched up 595 days in space over four flights, while Wagner has reached a total of 416 days over two flights.

Space exploration has remained a rare avenue of cooperation between the US and Russia since the latter unleashed its war in Ukraine in February 2022.

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Earlier this month, the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft carried another US-Russia crew – NASA’s Jonathan Kim and Russian crewmates Sergei Ryzhikov and Alexei Zubritsky – to carry out scientific experiments on the ISS.

However, the US and other Western countries have ceased other partnerships with Roscosmos as part of a slew of sanctions placed on Russia over the war.

Astronauts, who are trained and certified by NASA and others like the European Space Agency, are known as cosmonauts when they represent Roscosmos.