ISS crew lands in Kazakhstan after more than 200 days

An International Space Station crew has landed safely in Kazakhstan after more than 200 days in space.

The Soyuz capsule carrying NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan, Jessica Meir and Russian space agency Roscosmos’ Oleg Skripochka touched down on Friday near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 11:16 a.m. (0516 GMT).

The crew returned to Earth exactly 50 years after the Apollo 13 astronauts splashed down in the Pacific after an oxygen tank explosion aborted the moon-landing mission.

Morgan wrapped up a 272-day mission on his first flight into space. He conducted seven space walks, four of which were to improve and extend the life of the station’s Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which looks for evidence of dark matter in the universe.

Meir and Skripochka spent 205 days in space, with Meir carrying out the first three all-women spacewalks with her crewmate Christina Koch, who returned from space in February.