A record-setting American and two Russians have landed safely back on Earth after a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.
NASA's Jeff Williams, 58, logged 534 days in space over four missions.
Station commander Jeff Williams, with the U.S. space agency, and flight engineers Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka, both with Russia's Roscosmos agency, pulled away from the space station at 5:51 pm EDT/2151 GMT as the ships sailed 258 miles (415 km) over eastern Mongolia, said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly previously held the record with 520 days in space. Williams posted on Twitter Tuesday, along with a picture of the Earth's outer atmosphere.
"Vast gratitude toward my crewmates, ground teams, supporting friends, and family", Williams added.
Mr Williams was instrumental in preparing the station for the future arrival of United States commercial crew spacecraft, NASA said. NASA spokesman Dan Huot, who was reporting from the scene, said the trio's Russian Soyuz capsule made a bull's-eye landing.
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The returning crew members will be replaced by United States astronaut Shane Kimbrough and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko, who are scheduled to blast off for the space station on September 23. The other crew members include Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka. "We especially enjoyed our stay with the entire crew of Expedition 48", Williams said during a change of command ceremony.
That's how much it costs to send one NASA astronaut to and from the space station now, according to a new report that NASA's Office of Inspector General released on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016.
A replacement crew is due to launch on September 23 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Williams first blasted to space aboard the shuttle Atlantis in 2000.
