371 days after: Cosmonauts return to Earth after longest space mission
Vladivistok, Sep 28 : Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos announced that two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut have safely returned to the Earth on Wednesday after living for a year in the International Space Station (ISS).
The Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft, carrying Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin, and Frank Rubio, had undocked from the Prichal module of the ISS earlier Wednesday and landed in Kazakhstan at 14:17 Moscow time (1117 GMT), Roscosmos said on its official website.
After a 371-day stay in space, Prokopyev and Petelin made the longest flight program in the ISS history.
During his two space flights, Prokopyev accumulated more than 567 days and more than 55 hours in total for eight spacewalks. Petelin, who made his first space flight, accumulated more than 39 hours in total for six spacewalks.
