Carrying three space station crew members back home after 173 days in orbit, the Russian Soyuz MS-02 landing craft touched down in Kazakhstan on Monday after a parachute-assisted descent through clear skies.
The 7-foot by 7-foot capsule landed at 1120 GMT (7:20 a.m. EDT; 5:20 p.m. local time in Kazakhstan) with Sergey Ryzhikov, Andrey Borisenko and Shane Kimbrough on-board.
These images from NASA and Roscosmos photographers show the capsule coming back to Earth under its orange and white main parachute, then firing soft landing rockets at touchdown before recovery teams converged on the craft to extract the three-man crew.
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