A capsule carrying two US astronauts and a Russian astronaut landed from the International Space Station (ISS), today, Wednesday (28/2/2018).
The capsule comes from the shuttle plane 'Soyuz' manned by Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei from the US space agency NASA and Alexander Misurkin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
They landed on a snowy plain in the area of Zhezkazgan, Khazakhstan, at 9:31 pm. Misurkin was the first person out of the capsule, followed by two of his colleagues with a smile and waved to the Russian SAR team at the scene.
These three men spent more than 5 months researching the planet Earth on the ISS, which is 400km above sea level.
The plan, they will be replaced by other NASA 2 members, Andrew Feustel and Richard Arnold, and one member of Roscosmos, Oleg Artyemyev using the shuttle aircraft that will take off at the Kazakhstan space station, on 21 March.
Russia's Soyuz capsule brings Kelly, Kornienko, and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov who accompanies them. If Kelly and Kornienko spent nearly a year in space, the new Volkov spent 5.5 months on the ISS.
The Soyuz capsule succeeded in developing a gigantic parachute as it entered the Earth, eventually landing in the arid meadow near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at about 10:26 am local time. The landing took place 3.5 hours after the capsule left the ISS in its orbit.
Volkov first came out of the capsule and was greeted by his father Alexander Volkov, who was also a cosmonaut. Kelly who came out next, waved her ardently and smiled before having a satellite conversation. Kornienko comes out last.
All three are immediately given blankets and get special handling by a team that is already on standby
But recently, NASA and the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) announced that they will be building the Deep Space Gateway together. Both countries have signed an agreement in Australia at the 68th International Astronautics Congress in Adelaide.
What is Russia's contribution to this mission of cooperation? According to the TASS news agency, Russian officials said they would provide one to three modules to build the space station in the orbit of the Moon, as well as devise a docking mechanism that a space shuttle would use as it approaches the Moon space station later.
Russia also offers to bring some parts of the space station using their new heavy lift rockets. They did not specify which rocket to use, but it sounded like an Angara rocket under development, and is expected to make its first flight over the next few years.
The Deep Space Gateway space station itself will serve as the primary goal of NASA's space exploration effort, once the SLS and Orion Crew Modules are completed. The first SLS launch will bring unmanned Orion capsules on trans-lunar flights by 2018. Then the SLS will be used to send the Europa Clipper to the Jupiter system.