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Three International Space Station crew members return safely to Earth

Posted at 9:17 AM, Oct 31, 2016
and last updated 2016-10-31 09:17:32-04

NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins, along with Russian Federal Space Agency’s Anatoly Ivanishin and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Takuha Onishi arrived back on Earth on Saturday after spending four months on the International Space Station.

The crew left the ISS on Saturday at 8:35 p.m. ET and landed in Kazakhstan at 11:58 p.m. ET.

They spent a total of 115 days in space.

Before leaving, the Expedition 49 crew handed over the command of the ISS to the crew who will lead Expedition 50 – NASA Astronaut Robert Kimbrough and Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonauts Sergey Nikolayevich Ryzhikov and Andrei Borisenko.

In a few weeks, the Expedition 50 crew will be joined by three others – Peggy Whitson of NASA, Thomas Pesquet of European Space Agency and Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos.