MOSCOW: Three astronauts landed back on Earth on Thursday after a troubled stint on the ISS marred by an air leak and the failure of a rocket set to bring new crew members.

A Soyuz spacecraft ferrying Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, Nasa’s Serena Aunon-Chancellor and Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos landed safely in Kazakhstan, Russia’s space agency said.

“There’s been a landing... The crew of the manned Soyuz MS-09 has returned safely to Earth after 197 days,” Roscosmos said on Twitter.

The spacecraft landed slightly ahead of schedule at 0802 Moscow time, Roscosmos said on its website. “The crew feels well after returning to Earth,” the space agency said.

Live footage on the websites of Nasa and Roscosmos did not show the landing of the astronauts’ capsule due to thick fog over the snow-covered Kazakh steppe.

Rescuers pulled the crew members out of the capsule, with Prokopyev and Aunon-Chancellor appearing pale and weak due to the effects of long weightlessness, while Gerst beamed broadly and gave an interview to German television.

Published in Dawn, December 21st, 2018