Two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut left the International Space Station on Wednesday toward Earth after nearly six half in orbit.
The former commander of the space station Steve Swanson and cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev were clamped in the Russian Soyuz capsule that took them to the station in March and was separated from the platform at 23:01 GMT when the artificial satellite was 418 km over eastern Mongolia.
"We get a lot., We had so much fun," Swanson said during a change of command ceremony Tuesday that broadcast television NASA.
Besides a couple of spacewalks by the Russians, the crew performed a record of scientific experiments, updated prototype humanoid robot and repaired the damaged equipment.
"We did a lot of maintenance, which is good and bad," Swanson said. "I love doing maintenance, but it means that things break."
The new station commander, Max Suraev remains aboard the checkpoint in orbit by the NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and the European Space Agency Alexander Gerst. Crew members returning, Swanson, Skvortsov and Artemyev, are scheduled to land at Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 02:23 GMT.
"From what I have said is like a ride at Disney World," Swanson, an astronaut to experience two releases said but makes its first landing aboard a Soyuz during an interview.
During the descent, the crew will experience a force equal to four times that of gravity and rotate when the parachute of the capsule is opened. Three crew members of substitutes, including the first Russian woman to serve on the season, are scheduled to take off on September 25.
"Having three new faces up here is going to be fun," Wiseman said in an interview aboard the station.
The new ones are NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore and cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova. Serova will be only the fourth Russian woman in space and the first to serve on the International Space Station, a research complex group of 15 nations that cost 100,000 million.
The last Russian woman in space was Yelena Kondakova, in May 1997.
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