3 astronauts return to Earth from ISS

 Hazzaa Ali AlMansoori, the first astronaut from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), returned to Earth on Thursday from the International Space Station (ISS) alongside NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Soyuz commander Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

The Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft with Hague, Ovchinin and Almansoor landed safely at 6:59 a.m. EDT in Kazakhstan.

For AlMansoori, this landing completed an eight-day stay on the station that covered 128 orbits of Earth and a journey of 3.1 million miles since launching on September 25 with NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos.

AlMansoori made history as he became the first person from the UAE to fly in space.

Hague and Ovchinin launched on March 14, along with fellow NASA astronaut Christina Koch. Six hours later, they began their 203-day mission on the station, orbiting Earth 3,248 times and traveling 86.1 million miles.

Koch remains aboard the orbiting laboratory for an extended mission that will provide researchers the opportunity to observe effects of long-duration spaceflight on a woman, in preparation for human missions to the Moon and Mars.

She is expected to return to Earth in February 2020, almost a year after her launch.IANS