American astronaut Anne McClain, Canadian David Saint-Jacques and Russian Oleg Kononenko returned to Earth on Tuesday after a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Anne McClain, Oleg Kononenko and David Saint-Jacques - who broke the record for time spent in space by a Canadian - landed in the Kazakhstan steppe at 2:47.
Welcome home @AstroAnnimal! See you back in Houston on Tuesday night! https://t.co/yuOTrZ4Jutpic.twitter.com/fBm6HRSKns
- Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) June 25, 2019The explosion of Soyuz
Their departure for the orbital station on 3 December had been a matter of concern as he was following the misadventure that occurred in mid-October to the Russian Alexey Ovchinin and the American Nick Hague: about two minutes after their take-off, their Soyuz spacecraft had exploded and they had been forced to an emergency landing. The two men had survived unscathed, but the incident, the first of this magnitude in the history of post-Soviet Russia, was another blow to the country's space industry.
Before their departure for space, Anne McClain, Oleg Kononenko and David Saint-Jacques were optimistic and the tone did not change during their stay aboard the Orbital Station, one of the last examples of cooperation active between Moscow and Western countries. "A beautiful night over Africa for my last night on the ISS", noted on Twitter Anne McClain, 40, who made two space trips during this first mission.
204 days in space
The ISS circling the Earth in about 90 minutes, his colleague David Saint-Jacques, 49, was able to marvel one last time of the vision of Canada before returning. "British Columbia and Nunavik ... I will miss the sight of these great Canadian landscapes!", Tweeted the astronaut from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). David Saint-Jacques, who was also on his first trip, pushed back the record time spent in space by a Canadian: 204 days, against 187 for his compatriot Robert Thirsk.