Expedition 27 crew successfully returns to Earth

May 25, 2011

The crew returned to Earth safely from the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday. The crew landed in Kazakhstan aboard the spacecraft, the same craft they launched on last December.

The crew, consisting of commander and flight engineers  and, spent approximately five months in space aboard the ISS.

After landing, recovery teams helped the crew exit their  capsule and adjust to surface gravity again. While Kondratyev returned to the, Coleman and Nespoli returned to Houston, Texas.

While in space the crew worked on over 150 experiments and saw the arrival of several spacecraft: a Japanese, two Russian , the European  and the space shuttles  and  on their final flights.

This was Russian cosmonaut and commander Dimitri Kondratyev's first spaceflight, the third for NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman, and the second for European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli.

The crew of and  remain aboard the ISS. Three new crew members are expected to launch on June 7 to join their colleagues aboard the orbital outpost.