Russian cosmonauts returned to Earth from the ISS

The descent vehicle of the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft landed in In Kazakhstan, Russian cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin and Ivan Wagner returned from the International Space Station with American astronaut Donald Pettit, the landing was broadcast by Roscosmos.

Late on Saturday evening, Ovchinin, Wagner and Pettit settled into the ship, said goodbye to Russians Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexei Zubritsky and Kirill Peskov, Americans Anne McClain, Nicole Ayers and Johnny Kim, as well as Japanese Takuya Onishi, and then closed the hatches between Soyuz and the ISS.

The ship undocked from the station at 0.57 Moscow time on April 20. The ship's engine was switched on for braking at 3.27. After deceleration, Soyuz MS-26 descended from orbit, entered the dense layers of the atmosphere and divided into compartments. The broadcast footage showed him parachuting over the Kazakh steppe.

Ovchinin, Wagner and Pettit have been on the ISS since September 11, 2024. During this time, Russian cosmonauts performed more than 40 experiments and conducted one spacewalk (in December), during which they installed a Whole Sky Monitor spectrometer outside the station.