Mission Commander Jeff Williams, returned to Earth today after clocking up a cumulative total of 534 space-days.
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The 58-year-old and two Russian cosmonauts parachuted and landed on the steppes of Kazakhstan at dawn, a NASA TV broadcast showed. Kelly will still hold the record for longest continuous amount of time in space at 340 days. Williams and his two Russian colleagues, Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka logged 117.2 million kilometers in space, circling the Earth 2,752 times before landing on target in the south central steppes of Kazakhstan.
After a six-month trek in orbit, three crew members of the International Space Station (ISS) returned to Earth early on Wednesday morning, just 23 minutes after sunrise at 7:13 am local time (0113 UTC).
The mission comes the same day a U.S. space probe was cleared for launch on Thursday to collect and return samples from an asteroid in hopes of learning more about the origins of life on Earth and perhaps elsewhere in the solar system, NASA said.
Spaceflight Now reports that outgoing station commander Jeff Williams will join Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka for a trip back to Earth on Tuesday. He remains in the space station with American Kate Rubins and Japan’s Takuya Onishi.
Now-retired astronaut Scott Kelly still holds the US record for consecutive days in space (340 days), but Williams surpassed him in total time, thanks to his three long-term stays on the space station plus a shuttle flight in 2000.
“Vast gratitude toward my crewmates, ground teams, supporting friends, and family”, Williams added.
On Wednesday, September 07, 2016, sharp at 7.13 AM, the 172 days space mission wrapped off and a United States space traveler alongside two Russian cosmonauts arrived on Earth.
“We’ll be missing you here”, Ivanishin said during a change-of-command ceremony on Monday.
The Expedition 48 trio launched to the space station in March.
“We’ve enjoyed a great stay up here over the last nearly six months”, Williams said during a change of command ceremony Monday. “Station is looking attractive!” he said.
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The next Soyuz spacecraft with Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov, Andrei Borisenko, and US astronaut Robert S. Kimbraugh aboard will fly to the ISS on September 23.
