A Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft carrying Russian cosmonauts Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev as well as Nasa astronaut Christopher Williams has returned to earth, Russia’s Roscosmos space agency said yesterday.
The spacecraft landed in the afternoon near the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan, the agency said.
The Soyuz capsule descended under parachutes and touched down in a designated landing zone southeast of Dzhezkazgan. The mission marked the first spaceflight for Williams and Mikaev, while Kud-Sverchkov completed his second expedition to the orbital laboratory.
Following the landing, the crew was scheduled to fly by helicopter to Karaganda. Williams will then return to Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, while his Russian crewmates will head to the Star City training centre near Moscow.
Despite strained ties between Washington and Moscow since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the two countries have maintained co-operation aboard the International Space Station (ISS), with American and Russian astronauts continuing to fly on each other’s spacecraft under a seat-exchange agreement.
The returning crew handed over operations to Expedition 75, which was reinforced on July 14 with the arrival of Nasa astronaut Anil Menon and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina. They launched from the Russia-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for an eight-month mission.
Nasa Administrator Jared Isaacman attended the Baikonur launch, marking the first visit by a Nasa chief to the historic spaceport in eight years.
The newly arrived crew joined Nasa astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev aboard the orbiting laboratory.
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