Astana (Kazakhstan) – The Russian Gennady Padalka returned to Earth on Saturday with two other astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), becoming the cosmonaut who spent the most time in space, with 879 cumulative days five missions.
M. Padalka, 57, landed on a barren steppes of Kazakhstan at 0:51 GMT as planned, accompanied by the Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov and Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen. The landing took place. All is well, said a spokesman for the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
The Russian, who commanded the 44th expedition to the ISS, June 28 beat an old record of 10 years, that of the total number of days spent in space, hitherto held by another Russian Sergei Krikalev (803 days, nine hours and 41 minutes).
The last mission of Mr. Padalka started March 27, when he took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakhstan) with compatriot Mikhail Kornienko and American Scott Kelly.
Those who have come down with him Saturday, Andreas Mogensen, the first in Danish space, and Aidyn Aimbetov the third cosmonaut of his country, spent only a short time in the ISS: they took off aboard the Soyuz TMA-18M on September 2 and docked on the station September 4.
The space travel is one of the few international cooperation programs between Russia and the West that have not been canceled because of the conflict in Ukraine.
But the common space program has struggled this year.
In late April, Russia had suspended all space travel for almost three months after the failure of the vessel Progress -Cargo without driver.
Progress had lost contact with the ground and is burned in the atmosphere, forcing a group of astronauts to spend an extra month in the ISS.
In May, another Russian vessel, a Proton-M rocket carrying a Mexican satellite crashed in Siberia shortly after its launch.
The International Space Station, whose construction cost 150 billion dollars (132 billion euros), orbiting the Earth at about 28 thousand km / h since 1998
(© AFP / September 12, 2015 3:41).
(AFP / 09.12.2015 3:43) ->
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