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June 26, 2019

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3 astronauts safely back after end of ISS mission

Source: AFP | 00:06 UTC+8 June 26, 2019 | Print Edition

The first crew to blast off to the International Space Station following a launch accident returned to Earth safely yesterday.

NASA astronaut Anne McClain, veteran cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmo and Canadian Space Agency record-holder David Saint-Jacques emerged from the spacecraft to applause from support crews, after touching down near the Kazakh city of Dzhezkazgan.

Live footage from the landing site broadcast on NASA television showed the three sitting in chairs smiling as they were attended to by staff ahead of a journey back to Moscow for Kononenko and Houston for McClain and Saint-Jacques.

Arriving at 2:47am (GMT) to warm conditions, Kononenko joked that he was 鈥渉appy to see any kind of weather鈥 after coming back from space.

The trio鈥檚 launch on December 3 was the first after a Soyuz rocket carrying Russia鈥檚 Aleksey Ovchinin and US astronaut Nick Hague failed in October just minutes after blastoff, forcing the pair to make an emergency landing.

McClain, Kononenko and Saint-Jacques had been optimistic ahead of their successful launch and remained upbeat throughout their time aboard the orbital lab which is seen as a rare example of cooperation between Russia and the West.

鈥淎 beautiful night pass over Africa on my last night on @Space_Station,鈥 tweeted 40-year-old McClain, who completed two spacewalks during her virgin mission to the ISS.

Fellow first-time flyer Saint-Jacques broke the record for the longest single spaceflight by a Canadian astronaut, previously held by Robert Thirsk.

Thirsk clocked 187 days at the ISS in 2009 during a typical six-month mission, while 49-year-old Saint-Jacques鈥 mission will stand at 204 days.

The record was helped along by the fact that the launch was moved forward to December 3 from December 20 for operational reasons 鈥 possibly as a confidence booster after the accident.

The returning astronauts were given a ceremonial send-off on Monday as they exited the ISS by Ovchinin, Hague and NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who arrived at the lab in March on a fresh mission.

Russians dominate the rankings for cumulative days spent in space, with the Kononenko reaching 737 days.

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