Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka returns safely to Earth with two other astronauts from the International Space Station Saturday with the record for having spent the most time in space.
An international crew trio of one space veteran and two rookies safely returned to Earth on Saturday, making a successful parachute-assisted landing in the Kazakh steppe aboard their Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft. Gennady Padalka, now looking at 878 days spent in space, making him the most experienced space traveler in history, was joined aboard the Soyuz by Andreas Mogensen and Aidyn Aimbetov who spent just ten days in space to facilitate the switch of Soyuz spacecraft by Mikhail Kornienko and Scott Kelly who are approaching the half-way point in their one-year mission. Climbing into their Soyuz capsule in the evening hours on Friday, the two short-duration crew members bid farewell to the Space Station after a visit of just one week while Gennady Padalka departed ISS for the fourth time, having stayed nearly two years aboard the complex as part of four missions. The crew set sail at 21:29 UTC when their Soyuz undocked from the Zvezda module of the Station and fired its thrusters to move away from ISS over the course of one and a half laps around Earth to set up for the deorbit burn, placing Soyuz on its path out of orbit and towards the atmosphere.
