The Soyuz capsule brings back three planes from the station after six months of orbit

A Russian Soyuz ferry carrying a Russian cosmonaut and two NASA astronauts unloaded Thursday morning from the International Space Station, took a tour around the 20-year-old outpost for a photographic survey and then plunged again on Earth to land in the steppe of Kazakhstan. to conclude a stay of 197 days in the space.

Descending under an orange and white parachute, the Soyuz MS-08 / 54S descent module is installed at 7:45 am (eastern daylight time), at 7:45 am (eastern daylight time), in the south-east of Dzhezkazgan (Kazakhstan).

Russian recovery crews stationed nearby rushed to the charred ship to help commander Oleg Artemyev, flight engineers Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold to get out of the cramped module as they began their rehab to gravity after six and a half months in orbit.

The three men seemed fit and cheerful as they were transported to nearby recliners for an initial round of medical visits and satellite phone calls to their friends and family. Artemyev is presented with fresh fruits, including a large cantaloupe, a squash and a carrot.

They began their return to Earth four hours earlier, at 03:57, when the Soyuz was removed from the upper module of the Poisk space station, while the two spacecraft sailed about 250 miles overhead. from Madagascar.

Contrary to usual practice, Artemyev manually piloted the spacecraft by performing a partial loop around the station, which allowed Feustel to carry out a photographic study of the outpost as the twentieth approached. anniversary of the launch of the first module in November 1998. The laboratory has been in permanent rotation of astronaut-astronaut crews since October 2000.

"That's good!" Someone said on the space-ground audio loop while Feustel was taking pictures of Soyuz's upper orbital module. A few minutes later, someone who spoke Russian complimented Feustel saying, "Drew, good job."

With the photos in hand, the Soyuz crew left the area to set up the ship for re-entry. And at the scheduled time, at 6:51, Artemyev monitored the rocket fire of the Soyuz rocket in 39 minutes, slowing the ship nearly 100 km / h and projecting the far side of its orbit into l & # 39; atmosphere.

Half an hour later, at an altitude of about 97 miles, the three modules constituting the Soyuz MS-08 / 54S probe separated as expected and the central crew descent module, the only one with a shield thermal protection, struck the discernable atmosphere. at almost five miles per second.

After enduring about 15 minutes of extreme warming and rapid deceleration, subjecting the crew to a force of about four times greater gravity, the main parachute of the descent module deployed at an altitude of About six miles.

"We feel good," Artemyev reported. "Wish to celebrate."

A few minutes later, the capsule dropped on a touchdown, creating a cloud of dust when its rockets fired a moment before the crew cabin hit the ground. The mission lasted 196 days and 18 hours since the launch of the Baikonur Cosmodrome on March 21st.

The total time of Artemyev in space during two station visits now rises to 366 days. Feustel, a veteran of three flights, including a Hubble Space Telescope repair mission, now has 226 recorded altitude days. Arnold's total on two flights to the station rises to 210 days.

During their stay on board the station, the trio welcomed three members of its crew: the German astronaut Alexander Gerst, the Soyuz commander MS-09 / 55S, Sergey Prokopyev, and the NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor, two cargo ships SpaceX Dragon, a Russian freighter, a cargo freighter. , a Northrup Grumman Cygnus refueling ship and a Japanese HTV freighter carrying replacement batteries for the station's solar power system.

They also organized four outings in space. Feustel and Arnold made three trips in March, May and June to perform maintenance tasks. Artemyev joined Prokopyev in August to work on the Russian segment of the station.

Feustel has traveled in space nine times nine times, totaling 61 hours and 48 minutes, placing him in third place on the list of the most experienced space walkers in the world.

The crew of Expedition 56 also faced a small leak in the Soyuz MS-09 / 55S spacecraft that led Prokopyev, Gerst and Auñón-Chancellor to the station in June. The leak was discovered in the upper module of this ferry, which prompted Artemyev and Prokopyev to quickly fix the problem, with a rag soaked in epoxy.

After the first medical examinations at the landing site, Artemyev, Feustel and Arnold had planned to go by helicopter to Karaganda, a nearby town, for a traditional Kazakh welcome ceremony.

From there, the crew will separate. Artemyev will embark on a Russian jet to join the Gagarin cosmonaut training center in Star City, near Moscow, while Feustel and Arnold will board a NASA plane to make a long trip back to Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Prokopyev, Auñón-Chancellor and Gerst, left behind on board the space station, took command of the station after Feustel's departure. They will have the station until October 11, when two new crew members – Alexey Ovchinin and Tyler "Nick" Hague, will board the Soyuz MS-10 / 56S.

The Soyuz satellite normally has three crews, but in this case a cosmonaut specially trained to work with a new Russian laboratory module was removed from the MS-10 flight because of the delay in launching the laboratory.