NASA astronauts, Peggy Whitson, and two other crew, landed in Kazakhstan on Saturday (2/9) after spending 655 days in orbit. (Sergei Ilnitsky / AFP)
Cape Canaveral, Florida (ANTARA News) - NASA's Astronaut, Peggy Whitson, and two other crew, landed in Kazakhstan on Saturday (2/9) after spending 655 days in orbit.
Whitson, 57, ended his stay of more than nine months at the Insternational Space Station, the longest record in the United States, which is 400 kilometers above the earth.
"I feel great, I love to work up here, one of the most fun jobs I've ever had," Whitson said in an interview on the plane, quoted by Reuters.
During his third mission at the station, Whitson spends a lot of time experimenting, including studies on lung tissue and bone cell cancer. He also performed four spacewalks (activities outside the spacecraft), before he had recorded six soacewalks, making him the most spacewalk female record.
Two crew members who were sent with Whitson in November returned to earth three more ago. He remained there to fill the void as Russia reduced their staff from three to two cosmonauts.
Whitson returns to Earth with Jack Fisher of NASA and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, who has been at the station since June.
Last April, Whitson broke the record in the US living in space for 534 days.
So far, only seven Russian cosmonauts have lived longer, one of them being Gennady Padalka, who holds the record for 878 days in orbit.
Peggy Whitson became an astronaut since 1996, the first woman to command the space station and also the first non-pilot woman who served as head of NASA's Astronaut Corps.
He grew up in Iowa, getting inspired by the Apollo program that landed mankind to the moon. He is determined to fly into space when he knows there are women who become astronauts.
