Astronauts see Earth, from this close for the first time in almost four months.
Astronauts Anatoly Ivanishin, Kate Rubins of NASA and Takuya Onishi of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency arrived in a remote steppe in Kazakhstan. They stayed for 115 days in space, and the journey back from International Space Station took them three-and-a-half-hours.
“I’m kind of reluctant to close the hatch. The time is very special here. … I didn’t have time to know what’s going on our planet, and maybe it’s for the better. On the space station, you live in a very friendly, very good environment,” Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin said, after sliding out of the Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft.
ALSO READ:SRK dedicates special poem to Indian soldiers
After staying in microgravity for so long, their bodies began to realise the gravitational pull as they came back on the Earth. The astronauts must adjust to having weight again(since weight on earth increases due to gravity).
Rubins sequenced DNA on the ISS in the summer – demonstrating that it’s possible to examine the genetic material of living organisms while in space.
Watch there landing experience here: