Crew of Record-Breaking Cosmonauts Land in Kazakh Steppe
The descent vehicle of the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft has successfully landed in the steppe of Kazakhstan, near the town of Zhezkazgan. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson were on board. Cosmonauts Kononenko and Chub spent 374 days in space, making their mission one of the longest in International Space Station (ISS) history. This is second only to the flights of Valery Polyakov and Sergey Avdeev, who spent 438 and 380 days in space, respectively, on the Mir station. Tracy Dyson stayed in orbit for 184 days. During their mission, Kononenko and Chub participated in several scientific experiments, took four Progress MS cargo ships, and conducted two spacewalks. The flight was an important contribution to the development of applied and fundamental research on the ISS. The spacecraft landed yesterday at 14:59, Moscow time. Kononenko and Chub's flight was a significant event for the space programs of Roscosmos and NASA. Despite completing their mission, the crew of the 72nd long-duration expedition, including Russian and American cosmonauts and astronauts, continues to work on the ISS. The station crew includes Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Wagner, and Alexander Grebenkin, and NASA astronauts Donald Pettit, Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps, Barry Wilmore, and Sunita Williams. The International Space Station (ISS) is one of mankind's most impressive engineering projects. It was launched in 1998, and is the product of 16 countries. The station revolves around the Earth every 90 minutes, allowing the crew to observe 16 sunrises and sunsets daily. In addition, the ISS is the largest object ever built in space, measuring about 109 meters long. The ISS is also considered the most expensive object built by humans, costing an estimated $120 billion by 2014, alone. According to NASA, the ISS "costs about $3 billion a year, roughly a third of NASA’s annual human space flight budget."
