“Today (Saturday), at 10.17 Moscow time (8.17 hours in mainland Portugal), the descent vehicle of the Soyuz MS-24 manned spacecraft landed near the city of Jezkazgan, in Kazakhstan”, Roscosmos said in a statement.
“The deorbit (of the spacecraft) and its descent to Earth proceeded normally,” added the Russian space agency.
According to the Roscosmos statement, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and the first Belarusian cosmonaut in history, Marina Vasilevskaya, “spent 14 days in orbit” on the ISS, while American astronaut Loral O’Hara returns from a 204-day mission.
For Marina Vasilevskaya and Loral O’Hara, this was the first flight of their careers to the ISS.
In a statement issued by his office, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko “congratulated the crew of the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft on their successful landing.”
Two weeks ago, the takeoff of the Soyuz spacecraft bound for the ISS, with Vasilevskaya and Novitsky on board, was postponed for a few days, to March 23.
Russian-Western cooperation in the space sector has been undermined by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the sanctions that followed. The ISS is one of the few remaining areas of cooperation between Moscow and Washington.
The Russian space sector is now limited by its lack of innovation, with most of its systems being based on Soviet technologies that are generally reliable but aging.
Furthermore, it faces increasing competition from private Western companies, such as billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
2024-04-06 13:00:00
#Astronauts #USA #Russia #Belarus #return #Earth
