A scaled-down team of technicians and medical personnel — wearing facial masks as a precaution against the global coronavirus pandemic — met a three-person space station crew on the steppes of Kazakhstan Friday after their landing aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
These photos show the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft’s descent under an orange and white main parachute, hours after undocking from the International Space Station to return home with commander Oleg Skripochka and NASA flight engineers Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan.
The capsule landed southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 1:17 a.m. EDT (0517 GMT; 11:17 a.m. Kazakh time) on Friday.
Skripochka and Meir arrived back on Earth after 205 days in orbit. Morgan’s mission aboard the space station lasted 272 days.
Read our full story on the landing.
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