KOROLYOV /Moscow Region/, November 10. /TASS/. The landing module of the manned spacecraft Soyuz TMA-13M with the crew from the International Space Station (ISS) on board landed in Kazakhstan’s steppe at 06:58 a.m. Moscow Time (03:58 a.m. UTC), the Moscow Region-based Mission Control Center said Monday.
“The capsule landed in the planned landing area, some 82 kilometers from the Kazakh city of Arkalyk,” the center said.
The rescue service aircraft detected the signal from the landing module’s transmitter and traced it until its landing place.
The Soyuz TMA-13M with Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev, NASA astronaut Gregory Reid Wiseman and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst on board had undocked from the ISS at 03:30 a.m. Moscow Time (00:30 a.m. UTC).
Search and rescue groups helped the international crew exit the capsule, the Mission Control Center told a TASS correspondent.
“The crew feel okay,” the center said. Surayev was the first to be evacuated, followed by Gerst and Wiseman.
Surayev, Wiseman and Gerst worked in orbit for 165 days. The landing capsule also brought back to Earth “the space generation” of Drosophila flies bred during zero gravity experiments.
Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyayev and Yelena Serova, as well as NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore, who became the ISS commander replacing Surayev, will continue working on board the station.
The new space crew will be launched to the ISS on board the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on November 24. The crew consists of Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, American Terry Virts and ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.