After spending 196 days in space, astronauts Thomas Pesquet and Oleg​ Novitskiy returns to Earth!

Photo Credit: NASA

New Delhi: Expedition 51 crew members Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Thomas Pesquet of European Space Agency (ESA) have safely landed on Earth after spending 196 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The two astronauts landed their Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft in Kazakhstan on Friday at approximately 10:10 am EDT.

According to NASA, the Russian recovery teams are helping the crew exit the Soyuz vehicle and adjust to gravity after their stay in space.

Oleg Novitskiy and Thomas Pesquet arrived at the space station on November19, 2016, along with NASA’s Peggy Whitson.

At the time of undocking, Expedition 52 began aboard the station under Yurchikhin’s command. Along with Whitson and Fischer of NASA, the three-person crew will operate the station until the arrival of three new crew members.

Randy Bresnik of NASA, Sergey Ryazanskiy of Roscosmos, and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli of ESA are scheduled to launch July 28 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.