spacetoday.net: Soyuz spacecraft lands in Kazakhstan

Soyuz spacecraft lands in Kazakhstan

Posted: Sat, Sep 12, 2015, 10:30 AM ET (1430 GMT)
Soyuz TMA-16M landing (NASA)

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying three people from the ISS, including one long-duration cosmonaut, landed in Kazakhstan early Saturday. The Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft touched down at its designated landing site at 8:51 pm EDT Friday (0051 GMT, 6:51 am local time Saturday), less than three and a half hours after undocking from the station. The Soyuz returned to Earth Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who spend five and a half months on the ISS and holds the record for most cumulative time spent in space, at 879 days. The Soyuz also returned Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen and Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov, who flew to the station ten days earlier on Soyuz TMA-18M.