AP —
A U.S. and Russian space crew landed safely in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Sunday after an eight-month stay aboard the International Space Station.
NASA cosmonaut Chris Williams and Russian crew members Sergei Kud Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev landed on a Soyuz MS-28 and smoothly landed with parachutes in a designated area southeast of Zhekazgan.
The 241-day mission at the orbiting outpost was the first space mission for Williams and Mikhaev, and the second for Kud Sverchkov.
The crew will be flown by helicopter to Karaganda, where Williams will board a plane to return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, while Kudo Sverchkov and Mikayev will fly to a training base in Star City outside Moscow.
Russia and the United States, once fierce rivals in the Cold War space race, are cooperating on space stations and other projects. The relationship was marred by tensions after Russia sent troops to Ukraine in 2022, but the U.S. and Russia continue to cooperate, with U.S. and Russian crews flying to orbiting outposts on each country’s spacecraft.
The crew of NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina arrived at the International Space Station on July 14 for an eight-month mission after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which was leased from Russia.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman also attended the launch, marking the first visit to Baikonur by a NASA administrator in eight years.
The newly arrived trio joins NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency cosmonaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fezyaev as part of Expedition 75.
