14 DAY TRIAL // NASA astronaut and former ISS Expedition 30 Commander, Daniel Burbank, and cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin, both from the Russian Federal Space Agency (RosCosmos) have just landed safely in Kazakhstan, after completing a five-and-a-half-month mission in space.
The three were part of Expedition 30 aboard the International Space Station. Their departure marked the completion of this mission, and the beginning of Expedition 31. They return home after spending 165 days in microgravity, in low-Earth orbit.
Mission Control reports that the trio landed their Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft in the Kazakh steppes at 6:45 am CDT (1145 GMT), after a safe reentry flight through the planet's atmosphere. They separated from the ISS at around 7:45 am EDT (1145 GMT) this morning.
The crew currently aboard the ISS is made up of cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, European Space Agency (ESA) flight engineer André Kuipers and NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who are the basis of Expedition 31.