PREVIEW

A Russian Soyuz capsule has successfully landed on the Kazakh steppe, returning two Russian cosmonauts and a US astronaut to Earth after missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft, carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub and Oleg Kononenko, along with NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, touched down at 11:59 GMT on Monday.

Kononenko and Chub had been part of the ISS crew since September of last year, completing an impressive 374-day mission. Dyson's time aboard the station was comparatively shorter, lasting 184 days. During her mission, she orbited the Earth 2,944 times and covered a total distance of 78 million miles.

The Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft launched on 23 March and docked at the ISS on 25 March, with Dyson accompanied by Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and Marina Vasilevskaya, a spaceflight participant from Belarus. Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya spent 12 days aboard the station before returning home on 6 April with NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara.

Kononenko and Chub, who launched on the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft alongside O’Hara last September, completed a 374-day stay in space, travelling 158.6 million miles and completing 5,984 orbits of Earth.

This marks Dyson's fourth spaceflight as she served as a flight engineer for ISS Expeditions 70 and 71. Kononenko, completing his fifth spaceflight, has now accumulated an all-time record of 1,111 days in orbit. Chub, meanwhile, concluded his first space mission.

Following their landing, the three crew members will be flown by helicopter to Karaganda, Kazakhstan. From there, Dyson will return to Houston on a NASA plane, while Kononenko and Chub will head back to their training base in Star City, Russia.