NASA Astronaut and Two Russian Cosmonauts Land Safely in Kazakhstan After 241 Days on ISS

Crew Returns After 241 Days in Orbit

A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts touched down safely in Kazakhstan on Sunday, closing out an eight-month mission aboard the International Space Station, according to AP News and the New York Post.

Chris Williams of NASA, along with Russian crewmates Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, landed by parachute in their Soyuz MS-28 capsule in a designated recovery zone southeast of Dzhezkazgan, the New York Post reported. The landing was described as smooth.

The mission lasted 241 days. It marked the first spaceflight for both Williams and Mikaev, and the second for Kud-Sverchkov, according to the Post.

A Partnership That Keeps Flying Straight

The US and Russia have been sending each other's astronauts to space and bringing them home safely for years, including through a war in Ukraine that has frozen or destroyed nearly every other form of US-Russia cooperation.

No sanctions regime, no diplomatic freeze, no proxy war has stopped Soyuz capsules from launching and landing on schedule. The space partnership has been one of the few things Washington and Moscow haven't managed to disrupt.

A reasonable skeptic could ask why the US is still buying seats on Russian rockets and hosting Russian cosmonauts at all, given Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine and the broader breakdown in US-Russia relations. Congress has debated this before, particularly when NASA leaned harder on SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule to reduce dependence on Soyuz. But the ISS itself was built as a joint project, and NASA has consistently argued that maintaining the partnership keeps the station operational and keeps a channel of technical cooperation open even when politics are strained elsewhere.

The AP's coverage of this landing got buried under a pile of unrelated headlines, everything from a van attack at a Berlin Pride festival to Houthi missiles fired at Saudi Arabia.

Both outlets confirm the basic facts: safe landing, eight-month mission, three crew members, two nationalities, zero incidents. Neither AP nor the Post reported any problems with the descent or the parachute deployment, which is the part of any Soyuz mission that draws the most attention given the capsule's history of hard landings in past years.

What's not yet clear from either report is who's replacing this crew on the ISS or what NASA's next crewed launch schedule looks like. AP labeled its own report a rundown of top stories rather than a deep dive, and the Post explicitly flagged its piece as "a developing story." More details on the science conducted during the 241-day stay and what's next for Williams, Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev should follow in the coming days.

The hardware worked, the crew is home, and the US-Russia space relationship continues to outlast whatever else is falling apart between the two countries.