U.S.-Russian space station crew lands in Kazakhstan after an 8-month stint

MOSCOW — A U.S.-Russian space crew landed safely in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Sunday after an eight-month stint on the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Russian crewmates Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev touched down in their Soyuz MS-28 that landed smoothly by parachute in a designated area southeast of Dzhezkazgan.

Their 241-day stint on the orbiting outpost was the first space mission for Williams and Mikaev and the second for Kud‑Sverchkov.

The crew was to be flown by helicopter to Karaganda, where Williams would board a plane to return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, while Kud‑Sverchkov and Mikaev were set to fly to their training base in Star City, outside Moscow.

Once bitter rivals in the space race during the Cold War, Russia and the U.S. cooperate on the space station and other projects. That relationship was strained by tensions after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, but Washington and Moscow have continued to work together across two U.S. administrations, with U.S. and Russian crews flying to the orbiting outpost on each country’s spacecraft.

The returning group has been replaced by a crew of NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, who arrived July 14 at the International Space Station for an eight-month mission after launching earlier that day from the Russia-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman attended the launch, the first visit to Baikonur by a NASA chief in eight years.

The newly arrived trio have joined NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev as part of Expedition 75.