Three crew members from the International Space Station (ISS) returned safely to Earth Thursday after a 5.5-month mission.
American astronauts Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker, as well as Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, landed in Kazakhstan at 10:46am local time Friday (11:46pm Eastern time Thursday).
The crew members returned in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft as part of a mission known as Expedition 25. The trio left Earth on June 15, arriving at the ISS on June 17. In total, Wheelock has now spent 178 days in space on his two missions, while Walker has been in space for 163 days; this was her first mission. Yurchikhin has 371 total days in space over the course of three missions.
Three crew members remain at the ISS; cosmonauts Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka and astronaut Scott Kelly. They arrived at the ISS on October 9 and are expected to stay there until March. You can follow Kelly on Twitter.
Astronaut Walker, meanwhile, kept a blog during her time at the ISS. She helped monitor the more than 120 experiments going on at the space station, some of which she participated in directly. "One of the main areas of study, of course, is how the human body reacts and adapts to being in space," Walker wrote in September. "I am taking part in a variety of research projects that look at how people's heart, lungs, and blood vessels change in a weightless environment as well has how your immune system changes. I am also participating in sleep studies and nutrition studies."
Wheelock is also on Twitter.
NASA has been hard at work trying to launch its space shuttle Discovery, which will bring necessary items, as well as additional experiments, to the ISS. But leaks, weather, and cracks have delayed Discovery's launch until at least December 17.
