MOSCOW (Sputnik) – A Soyuz landing capsule with Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen and Kazakh cosmonaut Aydin Aimbetov has successfully landed in a designated area in Kazakhstan, a representative of the Russian Mission Control Center said early on Saturday.
"The capsule landed 146 kilometers [about 90 miles] southeast of the city of Jezkazgan in Karaganda Region in the Republic of Kazakhstan," the representative told RIA Novosti, adding that all three crewmembers from the International Space Station (ISS) are feeling "fine" and will be flown to Moscow after they are examined by medical specialists.
The landing of the Soyuz capsule took place at around 03:52 Moscow time (00:52 GMT) on Saturday.
Padalka has thus beat a world record in combined flight duration set by Russian cosmonaut Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev (Krikalyov).
Padalka’s combined space flight duration now stands at 877 days.
Padalka completed his first space flight in 1999 as commander of the Soyuz TM-28 mission to the Mir space station.
This year, Padalka departed for the ISS on March 27 on board the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft along with cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko and US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut Scott Kelly.
In July, a Soyuz spacecraft brought a backup crew of Russia’s Oleg Kononenko, Japan’s Kimiya Yui and NASA’s Kjell Lindgren to the ISS.
Kononenko, Kornienko, Kelly, Lindgren and Yui remain on the ISS, along with Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov, who arrived at the space station together with Mogensen and Aimbetov earlier this month.
European Space Agency (ESA) flight engineer Andreas Mogensen became Denmark’s first ever astronaut.
The ISS program is a joint project among five participating space agencies: the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Russia’s Roscosmos, the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
