Landing on the Kazakhstan steppe coincides with astronaut Donald Pettit’s 70th birthday.
Russian astronauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Wagner returned to Earth with US Donald Petit, after a seven-month science mission on the International Space Station (ISS).
The Russian Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft carrying the trio landed southeast of the Kazakh town at 6:20am (01:20 GMT) on Sunday.
The timing of their parachute-assisted return to Earth coincided with the US astronaut’s 70th birthday, NASA said on social media platform X.
Happy birthday, @astro_pettit! Many happy returns (including this) 🥳
The MS-26 Soyuz Spacecraft landed in Kazakhstan at 9:20pm ET. pic.twitter.com/qfm5faxna0
– NASA (@NASA) April 20, 2025
NASA added that the crew has moved to the recovery staging area in Karaganda city and Pettit is on track.
The crew arrived at the ISS Institute in orbit on September 11, 2024, completing a 93.3 million miles (150.15 million km) journey, NASA said in a statement.
Pettit spent time investigating “metal 3D printing on orbit” and “water inflammatory technology” while exploring plant growth and fire behavior in space.
This was Pettit’s fourth space flight, and was logged in orbit for a total of 590 days throughout his career. Obchinin notched in space for 595 days on four flights, while Wagner reached a total of 416 days on two flights.
Space exploration continues to be an unusual means of cooperation between the US and Russia, as it unleashed the war in Ukraine in February 2022.
Earlier this month, the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft carried another US Russian crew of NASA’s Jonathan Kim and Russian crew Sergei Rizhkov and Alexeiz Blitzky to conduct scientific experiments on the ISS.
However, the US and other Western countries have halted other partnerships with Roscosmos as part of many sanctions placed on Russia during the war.
Trained and certified by others, such as the NASA and the European Space Agency, astronauts are known as astronauts when representing Roscosmos.