Space Station Crew Members Safely Return to Earth
The Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 56 Commander Drew Feustel and Flight Engineer Ricky Arnold of NASA, along with Flight Engineer and Soyuz Commander Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018. Feustel, Arnold, and Artemyev are returning after 197 days in space where they served as members of the Expedition 55 and 56 crews onboard the International Space Station.
Media Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
After spending 197 days onboard the International Space Station (ISSInternational Space Station), NASANational Aeronautics and Space Administration astronauts Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev returned to Earth today, landing safely in Kazakhstan.
While in orbit, the crew members welcomed five cargo resupply spacecraft and carried out hundreds of experiments onboard the ISS. Feustel and Arnold completed three spacewalks, including work to upgrade external cameras, replace components of the space station’s cooling system and communications network, and install new wireless communication antennas for external experiments. Artemyev completed one spacewalk to manually launch four small technology satellites and install an external experiment.
Next week, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin are scheduled to launch to the ISS, joining the Expedition 57 crew members already on station.